@article{Scobie:42217,
      recid = {42217},
      author = {Scobie, Grant M.},
      title = {Government Policy and Food Imports: The Case of Wheat in  Egypt},
      address = {1981},
      number = {605-2016-40167},
      series = {Research report},
      pages = {88},
      year = {1981},
      abstract = {During the next few decades, tremendous demands will be  placed on the foreign exchange-earning capacities of  developing countries. These countries need to pay for  rapidly increasing food imports and, in addition, for the  capital goods they need to import to sustain economic  growth. Intensives pressure will also be placed on the real  incomes of low-income people, particularly if the real  price of food rises in response to the rapid growth of  demand. That pressure, in turn, will increase the pressure  for consumer food subsidies, aided by a growing realization  that food subsidies are labor subsidies in the same sense  that interest rate subsidies are capital subsidies. In  contrast, constraints on foreign exchange availability,  saving rates, and the availability of government revenues  will press for containment of food subsidy coasts. These  forces are neither simpler nor well understood. Their  importance will increase.
Much of IFPRI’s research is  forced on the background factors, the conceptual elements,  and the empirical record of food subsidies. Import policy  is a major component of these. 
This research report by  Grant Scobie is a major step forward for IFPRI’s work in  this important area. It concentrates on the interaction of  government policy and wheat imports. Data for Egypt sheds  light on many of the issues related to their interaction.  Because the size of food subsidies and wheat imports is  much larger in Egypt than in other developing  countries.
This research is related to specific analyses of  food subsidies and their effects currently under way at  IFPRI. That work will allow more conclusions about how  international trade and domestic food policies interact.  Other work at IFPRI is refining our knowledge of the  relationship between food prices and availability, on the  one hand, and poverty, nutritional status, and employment  on the other. From these works objectives of growth and  equality more effectively and more humanely.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/42217},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.42217},
}