University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Essays on food security

Jolejole-Foreman, Maria Christina

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Maria Christina_Jolejole-Foreman.pdf

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/50337

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
Date of Ingest
2014-09-16T17:11:46Z
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
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50337
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2014 Maria Christina Jolejole-Foreman

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Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois
Dissertations - Agricultural and Consumer Economics