Economics of hunger : several methods, levels and scales
(2008)
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- Chronic or acute malnutrition are still a daily reality for more than 852 millions of people in the world. The reasons for this are numerous. Natural disasters, wars, chronic poverty, information asymmetries and market imperfections are some of them. This thesis aims to cover a large range of issues, from the household to the international level, which underlie the food insecurity problem in Niger. Its purpose is to help decision makers in their fight against hunger. It aims to do so by, giving a better understanding of the mechanisms that jeopardize access to food and, by developing decision support tools. First, in terms of food production, the author analyses how the actual spatial dispersion of the fields of a household influences its fertilization strategies. The results show that farmers are able to adopt complex spatial fertilization strategies in order to reduce the agricultural risk of their farm. Moreover, they demonstrate that the low rate of adoption of modern fertilization techniques can be explained by a wish of diversification. However, food security can only be achieved if grains can move from surplus areas to deficit areas. The author therefore proposes a technique that measures the integration among cereal markets and determines what can be done to improve their functioning. The integration seems to vary significantly among the Nigerien markets. In addition, improving communication infrastructures appeared to be a promising policy for increasing market integration. Finally, as humanitarian interventions are still needed in Niger, a new vulnerability assessment methodology, namely Econometric-Kriging-Bayesian (EKB), was elaborated so as to make an efficient use of all available data and to map vulnerable zones at the village level. In addition, the present Nigerien food aid mechanism has been shown to engender market distortions that may cause a food crisis through self-fulfilling expectations.
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de Araujo Marinho Filho, E. (2008). Economics of hunger : several methods, levels and scales. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/98030