Abstract
Abstract Food insecurity remains a critical challenge in Ethiopia, where households face limited availability of food due to reduced production, rising inflation, high unemployment, and structural vulnerabilities. Understanding the factors shaping food production (as a proxy for the availability dimension of food insecurity) is essential for effective policy design. This study investigates the short-run and long-run associations between food production (Food Production Index) and key macroeconomic and demographic variables, with time series data from 1993 to 2022. The Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to show both short-run and long-run relationships, with diagnostic tests confirming the absence of serial correlation, heteroskedasticity, and functional misspecification. Additional robustness checks were conducted using Canonical Cointegrating Regression (CCR) and Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) estimation techniques to validate the long run results. The consistency of results in ARDL, FMOLS, and CCR strengthens the validity of the estimated relationships. The analysis included inflation, unemployment, population growth, economic growth, and international aid, informed by Sen’s entitlement framework, Keynesian consumption theory, and structural vulnerability perspectives. The error correction term indicates a strong adjustment process toward long run equilibrium, with approximately 92% of short run deviations corrected within one period. The findings reveal that economic growth and population growth are statistically significant in the short run, with population growth associated negatively and economic growth positively associated with food production, while official development assistance is negatively and statistically significant in influencing short run production changes. In the long run, unemployment and population growth are negatively associated with food production, while economic growth shows a positive association. Official development assistance shows a negative association with food production, suggesting that aid may not translate into productive agricultural investment within the study period. Two-year structural breaks were included in the model, and the short run result shows that food production is indeed associated with structural changes. These results suggest that policy focus should be placed on reducing unemployment, managing population pressure, strengthening the role of economic growth in supporting agricultural production, and improving the targeting of development assistance toward productive agricultural use.