ABSTRACT

As we mentioned previously, most of the highly controversial issues surrounding food aid arise due to targeting errors and other forms of mismanagement of food aid, for example, poorly executed monetization or stocks management. In this chapter, we look at the consequences of these management problems. We divide these into two basic classes of effects: humanitarian impacts associated with health and nutrition – which is broadly associated with undercoverage errors (of exclusion) – and economic impacts related to disincentives, induced distortions or possible dependency created leakage errors (of inclusion). As noted in Chapters 7 and 8, many positive results have been achieved using food aid when it is well managed. In this chapter, we address the effects of poorly managed food aid.