Markets and Famines - Hardcover

Ravallion, Martin.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198285140 ISBN 13: 9780198285144

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1987

Synopsis

Famines have often presented a challenge to economic thought, provoking debates over the importance of aggregate food availability and the role of markets and governments in allocating limited food. This study of the economics of famine applies some modern methods of economic investigation to such issues, showing how the sharp increases in mortality observed during famines can arise without a decline in aggregate food availability, and how the markets' use of information about future scarcity is crucial to their performance during a famine. Including a detailed empirical investigation of the 1974 famine in Bangladesh, this book sheds new light on the way markets work during famines and on the effects of policies aimed at famine relief or prevention.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Ravallion, Research Fellow, Department of Economics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.

Review

"A pioneering quantitative study of famines in economies where markets are important....The success achieved by the author in capturing so many important issues in a coherent framework, and in submitting them to detailed empirical investigation, is truly remarkable....This splendid book is a tour de force--without question the most important piece of work on the subject since Amartya Sen's pioneering contribution seven years ago."--Journal of Economic Literature

"The paradox of a famine in one place and a food surplus in another has troubled many scholars, but rarely has it been approached with such thought, breadth, and rigor as in this book....[It] is the most scholarly and dispassionate study available on the economics--and politics--of famine....An illuminating, multidisciplinary analysis."--Choice

"Ravallion is extremely knowledgeable about the subject. He is also well acquainted with modern economic analysis. He uses his knowledge of the subject to identify interesting questions and uses economic analysis to try to answer them. I feel that his approach has much value and for this alone the book should be welcomed. The fact that Ravallion uses the tools of his trade with such skill is icing on the cake. I would therefore strongly recommend the book to all those interested in the economics of famine."--Steven Coate, Journal of Development Studies

"This is an important book. Its importance, however, is derived, in part at least, from what it has to say about the operation of certain types of markets as well as from what it has to say about famines and how best to deal with them....The usefulness of the work goes beyond the famine and markets discussion to the operation of markets in general, particularly those where a perceived 'social need' exists...it is difficult to go against the power of the argument advanced here."--Kenneth Jackson, Kyklos

"As a theoretical treatment of what modern economic analysis can say about the causes and prevention of famines, Ravallion's book stands alone...Ravallion's analytical approach is straightforward in outline but careful, formal and elegant in execution...Finally, and importantly, Markets and Famines is empirical...,it is the Bangladesh famine that motivates and drives the book. No economist could have studied that famine episode as Ravallion did, and still believe that markets always clear, expectations are always rational, and economic analysis calls for nonintervention in markets. Surely economics has something to say about such situations. Markets and Famines says it in both an elegant and persuasive way."--C. Peter Timmer, The American Journal of Agricultural Economics

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198285140
• ISBN 13: 9780198285144
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208