Optimal Food Price Stabilization in a Small Open Developing Country1
研究小型开放发展中国家面对产量和国外价格冲击时，如何通过最优贸易和储备政策稳定粮食价格，发现单独储备政策对消费者不利，而组合政策效果显著。
In poor countries, most governments \n implement policies aiming to stabilize the prices of staple \n foods, which often include storage and trade measures \n insulating their domestic market from the world market. It \n is of crucial importance to understand the precise \n motivations and efficiency of those interventions, because \n they can have consequences worldwide. This paper addresses \n those issues by analyzing the case of a small, open \n developing country confronted by shocks to both the crop \n yield and foreign price. In this model, government \n interventions may be justified by the lack of an insurance \n market for food prices. Considering this market \n imperfection, the authors design optimal public \n interventions through trade and storage policies. They show \n that an optimal trade policy largely consists of subsidizing \n imports and taxing exports, which benefits consumers at the \n expense of producers. Import subsidies alleviate the \n non-negativity of food storage. In other words, when stocks \n are exhausted, subsidizing imports prevents domestic price \n spikes. One striking result: an optimal storage policy on \n its own is detrimental to consumers, since its stabilizing \n benefits leak into the world market and it raises the \n average domestic price. By contrast, an optimal combination \n of storage and trade policies results in a powerful \n stabilizing effect for domestic food prices.