Training on food demand systems to build policy research capacity in India
Demand system estimation—gauging how consumer choices respond to changing prices and incomes—is a crucial facet of food policy research, yet remains a highly specialized and underdeveloped area in development economics
- capacity building
- India
Demand system estimation—gauging how consumer choices respond to changing prices and incomes—is a crucial facet of food policy research, yet remains a highly specialized and underdeveloped area in development economics. Globally, many researchers lack the necessary skills to accurately apply this approach to estimate elasticities of consumer demand.
India is a case in point. As consumption patterns shift rapidly across the country, shaped by rising incomes, nutrition transitions, demographic shifts, and evolving lifestyles, the need for robust, evidence-based food demand analysis is fundamental to designing effective agriculture and food policies.
Recognizing that many policies fail due to inaccurate or unverified data and/or a lack of capacity to develop and understand data, the CGIAR Policy Innovation Science Program has placed a special focus on this issue. As a part of that effort, IFPRI, Alliance Biodiversity International-CIAT, and the division of agricultural economics at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-IARI) jointly organized a four-day capacity building training on “Food Demand Systems and Elasticity Estimation for Policy Analysis” November 4-7 at ICAR-IARI in New Delhi.