Search results

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to existing literature by examining whether development aid has any measurable impact on food security, whether the impact is conditioned on the quality of governance and whether it differs based on the type of aid provided.

Panel-data analysis of 85 developing countries between 1994 and 2011, using generalized method of moments and two-stage least squares estimators.

The paper finds that aid in general has a small positive impact on food security; that multilateral aid, grants and social and economic aid have a positive effect on food security in their own right, and that bilateral aid, loans and agricultural aid are more conditioned on the quality of governance that other aid.

The main limitations rest with the imperfect nature of cross-country data on food security and governance, which I have tried to overcome through a series of robustness tests.

The findings suggest that aid, despite its many deficiencies, can play a positive role in strengthening food security. Furthermore, they indicate that concessional loans, bilateral aid and agricultural aid are likely to foster food security only in countries with better governance.

The paper constitutes a novel contribution to existing literature because it is one of the first to use cross-country data to explore the impact of aid on food security and because it utilizes a relatively complex aid categorization, which allows its conclusions to be more nuanced.

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature by examining which combination of three important agricultural policies – land distribution, domestic food production, and trade liberalization – is most conducive to improving food security in developing countries.

This study uses panel‐data analysis of 58 developing countries between 1990 and 2009, employing OLS, GMM and 2SLS estimators.

The paper finds that more equal land distribution, higher domestic food production, and a greater degree of trade openness impact food security positively.

Due to limited data on land distribution, the study analyzes data for 58 developing countries only. The fact that this sample is not statistically different from all developing countries, however, bolsters the validity of drawing generalized inferences about all developing countries based on the findings obtained. Another limitation rests with the paper's attempt at examining the effect of the three policies' joint impact on food security through the use of interactive terms, which should be developed further in future research.

The findings suggest that improving land distribution through land reforms, augmenting the level of domestic food production at the expense of non‐consumable crops, and liberalizing trade in a regulated manner could help developing countries bolster food security.

The paper presents a novel contribution to existing literature, both because it is one of the first to use empirical cross‐country analysis in the field of global food security and agricultural policy studies and the first to evaluate the conjoint effect of the three agricultural policy decisions on food security.