South Asian Experience of Trade Liberalization: Implications for Food Security
Inam Ur Rahman1, Syed Faizan Iftikhar2, Sanam Wagma Khattak3*, Wajahat Ali1, Azra4 and Sajad Ali1
ABSTRACT
Food security is a multi-dimensional phenomenon having four pillars like availability of food, access to food, utilization of food and stability of food, where each pillar consist of several indicators. This study have two main objectives; computation of food security various dimensions indices and a composite food security index and exploring the link between trade liberalization and food security various dimensions, in the case of selected South Asian economies. The descriptive analysis revealed that Pakistan is the most and Nepal is the least food secure country in the region. Moreover, at country level the food availability and accessibility has lower values, where most of the countries are below the regional average values. While exploring the implications of trade liberalization for food security this study uses the panel data of five south Asian economies for a period of 24 years by utilizing the fixed effect and random effect estimation techniques. The trade liberalization link has been explored separately with each dimension of the food security. The empirical results show that the trade liberalization have negatively affect the food availability, accessibility and stability in the case of South Asia, while the food utilization is found to be positively associated with trade liberalization.
To share on other social networks, click on any share button. What are these?
