Article

Long-run impact of Biofuel on Food Prices

Ujjayant Chakravorty, Marie-Hélène Hubert, Michel Moreaux, and Linda Nøstbakken

Abstract

About 40% of US corn is now used to produce biofuels, which are used as substitutes for gasoline in transportation. In this paper, we use a Ricardian model with differential land quality to show that world food prices rise by about 32% by 2022, about half of that from the biofuel mandate and the rest due to demand-side effects in the form of population growth and income-induced changes in dietary preferences from cereals to meat and dairy products. However, aggregate world carbon emissions increase, due to significant land conversion to farming and leakage from lower oil prices.

Reference

Ujjayant Chakravorty, Marie-Hélène Hubert, Michel Moreaux, and Linda Nøstbakken, Long-run impact of Biofuel on Food Prices, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, vol. 119, n. 3, July 2017, pp. 733–767.

Published in

The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, vol. 119, n. 3, July 2017, pp. 733–767