Gary Becker contra las retenciones y los controles de precios

Richard Posner Gary Becker ataca dos de las medidas utilizadas en el país durante los últimos años, las retenciones y los controles de precios:

During the current sharp run up in food prices, several food-exporting countries, such as Russia and Ukraine, have banned, or greatly restricted, the ability of farmers to export their produce. This lowers the price of food to urban consumers in these countries, and thereby helps the urban poor. However, such bans reduce the prices received by poor farmers of these countries. This reduces their incentives to raise their production of food, and makes these farmers worse off. It also raises the cost of food to families in food-importing countries, and thereby hurts the poor in these countries. Since farmers in developing countries are generally much poorer than those who live in cities and other urban communities, the poor may overall be made worse off when countries greatly restrict their food exports.

Unlike the situation in rich countries like the United States, city dwellers and other urban populations in developing countries like China and India usually have more political clout than rural families. For example, the massive famines in China during 1958-61 that resulted from the Great Leap Forward were concentrated in rural areas partly because farmers were forced to supply much of their reduced food output to the cities. This greater political power of urban populations also explains the restrictions on food exports in developing countries, even though they discourage food production, reduce the national incomes of these countries, and also overall tend to reduce rather than increase the real incomes of their poor.

To contain the rise in the retail food costs, many countries, including China, have also imposed retail price controls on foods that figure most prominently in the diets of lower income families. This helps those poorer families that are lucky enough to be able to buy most of the food they desire, but such price controls are likely to hurt the majority of poorer families. The reason is that price controls on food prices reduce the incentives of farmers to grow more food since they cannot benefit from what would be higher prices. Artificially lower food prices not only discourage food production but also increase the demand for food. The resulting excess demand for food means that price controls cause food rationing at both the retail and wholesale levels. Richer families tend to gain from this rationing compared to poorer families since they can offer “under the table” payments and other inducements to retailers to give them a disproportionate amount of the limited available food.

Está bueno para reflexionar. Creo que en parte explica el proceso de sojización que se ha visto en el país en los últimos años.

UPDATE: me confundí a Becker con Posner... pasa por postear en Semana Santa.