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    India’s Food Supply Chain During the Pandemic
    25 Jan 2021Working Paper Summaries

    India’s Food Supply Chain During the Pandemic

    by Matt Lowe, G V Nadhanael, and Benjamin N. Roth
    Policy makers in the developing world face important tradeoffs in reacting to a pandemic. The quick and complete recovery of India’s food supply chain suggests that strict lockdown measures at the onset of pandemics need not cause long-term economic damage.
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    Author Abstract

    We document the impact of India’s COVID-19 lockdown on the food supply chain. Food arrivals in wholesale markets dropped by 62 percent in the three weeks following the lockdown and wholesale prices rose by 8 percent. Six weeks after the lockdown began, volumes and prices had fully recovered. The initial food supply shock was highly correlated with early incidence of COVID-19. We provide evidence that this correlation is due more to state-level lockdown policy variation than local responses of those in the food supply chain. Finally, during the recovery phase, the correlation between the food supply disruption and COVID-19 exposure disappeared, suggesting uniform recovery.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: December 2020
    • HBS Working Paper Number: 21-070
    • Faculty Unit(s): Entrepreneurial Management
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    Benjamin N. Roth
    Benjamin N. Roth
    Assistant Professor of Business Administration
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