Agriculture Development and Nutrition Security Special PNAS USA Feature

From Joonkoo Lee, Gary Gereffi, and Janet Beauvais, Global value chains and agrifood standards: Challenges and possibilities for smallholders in developing countries doi:10.1073/pnas.0913714108

Agriculture Development and Nutrition Security Special Feature - Perspective

C. Peter Timmer
Behavioral dimensions of food security
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12315-12320; published ahead of print September 20, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913213107

Abstract
The empirical regularities of behavioral economics, especially loss aversion, time inconsistency, other-regarding preferences, herd behavior, and framing of decisions, present significant challenges to traditional approaches to food security. The formation of price expectations, hoarding behavior, and welfare losses from highly unstable food prices all depends on these behavioral regularities. At least when they are driven by speculative bubbles, market prices for food staples (and especially for rice, the staple food of over 2 billion people) often lose their efficiency properties and the normative implications assigned by trade theory. Theoretical objections to government efforts to stabilize food prices, thus, have reduced saliency, although operational, financing, and implementation problems remain important, even critical. The experience of many Asian governments in stabilizing their rice prices over the past half century is drawn on in this paper to illuminate both the political mandates stemming from behavioral responses of citizens and operational problems facing efforts to stabilize food prices. Despite the theoretical problems with free markets, the institutional role of markets in economic development remains. All policy instruments must operate compatibly with prices in markets. During policy design, especially for policies designed to alter market prices, incentive structures need to be compatible with respect to both government capacity (bureaucratic and budgetary) and empirical behavior on the part of market participants who will respond to planned policy changes. A new theoretical underpinning to political economy analysis is needed that incorporates this behavioral perspective, with psychology, sociology, and anthropology all likely to make significant contributions.

behavioral economics, structural transformation, food crises, world rice market


Joonkoo Lee, Gary Gereffi, and Janet Beauvais
Global value chains and agrifood standards: Challenges and possibilities for smallholders in developing countries
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12326-12331; published ahead of print December 13, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913714108

Ted London and Ravi Anupindi
Using the base-of-the-pyramid perspective to catalyze interdependence-based collaborations
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12338-12343; published ahead of print April 11, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.1013626108

Michael Kevane
Gendered production and consumption in rural Africa
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12350-12355; published ahead of print May 4, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.1003162108

Daniel Maxwell, Luca Russo, and Luca Alinovi
Constraints to addressing food insecurity in protracted crises
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12321-12325; published ahead of print June 6, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913215108

Prabhu L. Pingali
Green Revolution: Impacts, limits, and the path ahead
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12302-12308; published ahead of print July 23, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.0912953109

Laurette Dubé, Prabhu Pingali, and Patrick Webb
Paths of convergence for agriculture, health, and wealth
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12294-12301; published ahead of print July 23, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.0912951109

Thomas Reardon, C. Peter Timmer, and Bart Minten
Supermarket revolution in Asia and emerging development strategies to include small farmers
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12332-12337; published ahead of print December 6, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.1003160108

Global standards and local knowledge building: Upgrading small producers in developing countries
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12344-12349; published ahead of print June 13, 2011, doi:10.1073/pnas.1000968108

Ross A. Hammond and Laurette Dubé
A systems science perspective and transdisciplinary models for food and nutrition security
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12356-12363; published ahead of print July 23, 2012, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913003109

Patrick Webb and Steven Block
Support for agriculture during economic transformation: Impacts on poverty and undernutrition
PNAS 2012 109 (31) 12309-12314; published ahead of print December 20, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.0913334108


@ Special Issue 2012