5 Rational Responses and the Stability of the Rice Market

In this concluding chapter, we will summarize the three case studies and discuss their implications for policies aimed at enhancing the security of supply in the world rice market.In the preceding three chapters, we showed that the policy response of each government to the crisis was understandable-in some cases, inevitable-in light of each country's internal economic and political needs, even though some of the policy choices brought about undesirable results.In a sense, the choices made by the governments were "rational."This implies that similar responses may be repeated in future crises.A preventive scheme, therefore, should be built which takes into account such rational responses by rice-exporting countries.