C. Peter Timmer is a leading authority on agriculture and rural development who has published widely on these topics. He is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Development Studies, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He has served as a professor at Stanford, Cornell, three faculties at Harvard, and the University of California, San Diego, where he was also the dean of the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A core advisor on the World Bank's World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, Timmer also works with several Asian governments on domestic policy responses to instability in the global rice market. Among other awards, in 1992 he received the Bintang Jasa Utama (Highest Merit Star) from the Republic of Indonesia for his contributions to food security. In 2012 he received the Leontief Award for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, presented by the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. He is also an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agricultural development issues.
Timmer's work focuses on three broad topics: the nature of "pro-poor growth" and its application in Indonesia and other countries in Asia; the supermarket revolution in developing countries and its impact on the poor (both producers and consumers); and the structural transformation in historical perspective as a framework for understanding the political economy of agricultural policy.
For more information visit http://foodsecurity.stanford.edu/people/Peter_Timmer/ or http://www.cgdev.org/content/expert/detail/2720/.
Selected Publications
Food Policy Analysis (with W. P. Falcon and S. R. Pearson). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press for the World Bank, 1983.
Getting Prices Right: The Scope and Limits of Agricultural Price Policy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.
A World without Agriculture: The Structural Transformation in Historical Perspective, Henry Wendt Lecture, American Enterprise Institute, 2009.
Never an Empty Bowl: Sustaining Food Security in Asia (principal analyst and lead author), Asia Society and International Rice Research Institute Task Force Report, September, 2010, New York.
“A Century-Long Perspective on Agricultural Development,” (with Christopher B. Barrett and Michael R. Carter). American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 92, no. 2 (April, 2010), Special Issue Commemorating the Centennial of the AAEA, pp. 447-68.
“Failed Policies Lead to Food Shortages.” Opinion: The Wall Street Journal, Asia, Tuesday, February 22, 2011, p. 10. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476604576157611079551494.html
“Rural Changes Stimulate Rising Giants,” Science, Vol. 321. no. 5889, p. 642 (August 1, 2008), review of The Dragon and the Elephant: Agricultural and Rural Reforms in China and India, Ashok Gulati and Shenggen Fan, eds., Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2007. 574 pp.
Leontief Prize lecture: Why am I here? Delivered at the Center for Global Development and Environment (GDAE), Tufts University, Medford, MA, April 3, 2012. http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/about_us/leontief/TimmerLeontiefPrizeComments.pdf
