The high and volatile food prices in 2007–8 triggered estimates of massive increases in poverty and hunger. However, hunger and volatile food prices have long been a feature of developing economies. This paper examines the impact of high global food prices on domestic terms‐of‐trade, food consumption and child undernutrition in the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Liberia and Sierra Leone, comparing findings with the impacts of ‘seasonality’. As high international food prices permeated domestic markets, households in all the case study areas resorted to coping strategies common in the annual hunger season. Though acute malnutrition has not risen as consistently as in a seasonal hunger crisis, reduced micronutrient intake threatens to have severe long‐term consequences for health and poverty reduction. The similar impacts of seasonal and global food price rises on households provide an opportunity to design appropriate interventions to protect livelihoods.
This article describes the changes that have taken place in the work of the Budget Office of the central government as a consequence of the transition from the traditional budget process, often referred to as "incremental budgeting", to top-down budgeting. This transition has taken place in most OECD countries in the course of the last three decades and has generally led to the end of the century-old trend of growth of the public sector relative to GDP. As a consequence of this transition the role of the budget office has shifted from operational expenditure control to supervision on the maintenance of the medium term expenditure framework. In general this has led to a more co-operative relationship between the Budget Office and the financial divisions of the line ministries. This article is based on case studies in three countries, namely the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Slovenia and highlights the differences in their budgeting procedures and the extent to which the transition to top-down budgeting has been implemented.
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