Impact of the Political Risk on Food Reserve Ratio: Evidence Across Countries

Using an unbalanced panel data covering 75 countries from 1991 to 2019, the authors explore how the political risk impacts on food reserve ratio. The empirical findings show that an increasing political risk negatively affects food reserve ratio, and the same effects hold for both internal risk and external risk. Moreover, the authors find that the increasing external or internal risks both negatively affect food production and food exports, but external risk does not significantly impact food imports and it positively impacts food consumption, while internal risk negatively impacts food imports and food consumption. The results suggest that most governments have difficulty raising subsequent food reserve ratios in face of an increasing political risk, no matter if it is an internal risk or an external risk although the mechanisms behind the impacts are different.