ABSTRACT
Peace Accords signed in October 1992 ended a long period of civil war in Mozambique, but the war had caused severe constraints on food production. Furthermore, a devastating regional drought during 1991-2 put additional pressure on the food system, so that by the beginning of 1992 a major famine was threatening the country. The vector autoregression (VAR) model is specified as a three-equation system in weekly food aid arrivals and weekly retail prices of white and yellow maize in Maputo. Analysis of the VAR models was conducted using standard impulse response methods. Primary interest lies in the dynamic response of white and yellow maize prices to typical shocks to the amount of food aid being delivered. The results of the VAR analysis support the argument that informal market prices were responsive to food aid imports, even during the war/drought period.
