Food prices, government subsidies and fiscal balances in south Mediterranean countries
co-authored with Ronald Albers
Soaring food and energy prices sparked the revolts in Northern African countries at the end of 2010. Despite... more
Soaring food and energy prices sparked the revolts in Northern African countries at the end of 2010. Despite government subsidies, consumer price inflation rose, which reduced consumers’ purchasing power. This article empirically investigates the impact of world food prices on inflation and government subsidies for Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the occupied Palestinian territories and Tunisia during the ten-year period 2002-2011. Our findings
show an asymmetry in the response of consumer price inflation to world food price shocks, in that soaring world food prices made inflation rise fast while nominal rigidities prevented
inflation from falling. Moreover, this paper shows that government balances deteriorated up to 2% of GDP in 2008 and 2011 due to the incremental government food subsidies while they
hardly improved in value terms when world food prices sharply fell in 2009.
Terms of trade for agricultural and food products, 1951-2000
Co-authored with Raul Serrano
Published in Revista de Historia Economica/Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, (2011), 29: 213-243
This study aims to answer whether empirical records confirm the existence of a secular decline in the terms of trade... more This study aims to answer whether empirical records confirm the existence of a secular decline in the terms of trade affecting primary producers (the Singer–Prebisch hypothesis). The paper analyses the evolution of the terms of trade for agricultural and food products in the second half of the 20th century. We obtain sixty new real price indices for internationally traded agricultural products. We conclude, from a long-term perspective, that the deterioration in the terms of trade for agricultural and food products was strong and clear in the second half of the last century. In general, less processed products suffered a very heavy fall in their real prices. However, there was no continuous and persistent deterioration in the terms of trade either as a whole or for the great majority of the agricultural and food product groups (with the exception of natural rubber, textile fibres and other raw materials). Rather, this deterioration occurred in stages.
Prices in Neo-Assyrian Sources. State Archives of Assyria Bulletin X (1996), 11-53
by Mario Fales
The first ten volumes of SAAB were digitised at University College London in 2010, thanks to a UCL research incentive grant awarded to Karen Radner.
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