英文摘要 |
The paper examines the Venezuelan food and agricultural policies imposed by ex-President Hugo Chávez during 2001-2013 in order to explore why and how Venezuela became heavily reliant on food importation and eventually led to severe food shortage in 2014 when oil price collapsed. The research uses institutionalism and institutional complementarity as analytical framework, aiming at exploring how a series of food and agricultural policies, namely, land reform, price and exchange control, and nationalization of agroindustry sector under the framework of ''Food Sovereignty'' and ''The State Transition to Socialism of the 21st Century,'' had restructured the land ownership, food market institution and governance structure, and ultimately struck heavily on the local food production. The findings show that Chavez's policies have transformed Venezuela into a ''bureaucratic price coordination economy,'' in which the state controlled the economic policies in terms of the food pricing, supply chain distribution, and currency exchange. Unfortunately, the institutional incentive encouraged the social economy sector to strengthen ''speculation'' and ''arbitrage,'' which in turn, resulted in more ''shortage.'' However, the state responded by expanding the scope of expropriation and price control, leading to a vicious cycle, i.e. shortage–expropriation- more shortage-more expropriation. Eventually, the synergy of institutional complementarity created negative incentive that is discouraging to local production and encouraging speculation. Therefore, Venezuela became more dependent on food importation, which later on, triggered a food crisis when the oil price plummeted |