Essays on food security

Jolejole-Foreman, Maria Christina

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Description

Title

Essays on food security

Author(s)

Jolejole-Foreman, Maria Christina

Issue Date

2014-09-16

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

• Baylis, Katherine R.
• Mallory, Mindy L.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Baylis, Katherine R.

Committee Member(s)

• Mallory, Mindy L.
• Garcia, Philip
• Winter-Nelson, Alex E.
• Lipper, Leslie

Department of Study

Agr & Consumer Economics

Discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Food security
• Land degradation
• Instrumental Variable
• Food prices
• Market integration
• Vector Autoregression
• Vector Error Correction

Abstract

My three dissertation essays explore food security questions in Ethiopia, Philippines and India. Specifically, I estimate how food security responds to (1) land degradation in Ethiopian highlands, (2) domestic marketing policies in Philippines, and (3) trade protection policies in India. In my first paper, I merge environmental maps with geographically coded farmer survey data in Ethiopian highlands to estimate the effect of land degradation on the value of agricultural production. Because land degradation may be endogenous to agricultural production choices, this analysis explicitly controls for endogeneity using bequests and type of energy used for cooking as instrumental variables. I find that land degradation reduces agricultural value by 4 percent, which is smaller than when endogeneity is not accounted for. I also generate a differential impacts map based on the estimates from the spatial weighted regression. By identifying those regions or sectors of Ethiopia most at risk of losing agricultural value from land degradation, this paper provides important information for targeting conservation measures. My second paper examines the effect of government grain
procurement and distribution in the Philippines. I use a structural Vector Autoregression model to estimate impacts of policy shocks on market prices and then use the estimates simulate ‘no policy’ prices. I compare the simulated ‘no policy’ prices with actual historical prices. I find that government activities have a very small impact on rice price levels and variability. Specifically, I find that the government’s activities only impacted food prices during the small number of years when the country was self-sufficient in production. Finally, in my third paper, I examine how trade policies, specifically export bans, affected domestic rice and wheat market integration in India. I verify that Indian markets maintain segmented equilibria by testing for and finding thresholds in a Threshold Vector Error Correction Model. More specifically I find that export bans may have had have had unintended consequences of increasing domestic price differences thereby resulting in the lack of domestic market integration. Since the decisions to use these blunt instruments are taken by domestic governments worldwide, studying the domestic effect of these policies has the potential to affect the use of these policies by other countries in the future.

Graduation Semester

2014-08

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Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2014 Maria Christina Jolejole-Foreman

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