Food Price and Trade Policy Biases - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 376

suggests those measures—like export taxes on farm products in developing countries—
are not inevitable.
Unfortunately, the same cannot yet be said for policies that insulate domestic food
markets from international price fluctuations. While not discussed above (but see
Anderson and Nelgen 2012), both high-income and developing countries alter their
trade barriers in an attempt to protect consumers from food price spikes. It turns out,
though, that both food-surplus and food-deficit countries tend to so respond, and to a
similar extent. Hence they tend to cancel out each other's ability to stabilize their home
markets—but at the same time they exacerbate the instability in international food
prices (Martin and Anderson 2012). Beggar-thy-neighbor food policy actions are thus
a long way from being a thing of the past, and they are likely to continue until enough
countries get together and agree multilaterally to desist from protecting and insulating
their domestic food markets.
References
Anderson, K. 1995. “Lobbying Incentives and the Pattern of Protection in Rich and Poor
Countries.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 43 (2): 401-423.
——. 2000. “Agriculture's 'Multifunctionality' and the WTO.” Australian Journal of Agricultural
and Resource Economics 44 (3): 475-494.
——, ed. 2009. Distortions to Agricultural Incentives: A Global Perspective, 1955-2007 .
Washington DC: World Bank. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTTRADERESEARCH/
Resources/544824-1272467194981/DAI_Global_Perspective.pdf.
——, ed. 2010. The Political Economy of Agricultural Price Distortions . Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, K., J. Cockburn, and W. Martin, eds. 2010. Agricultural Price Distortions, Inequality,
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