Real-time monitoring of food price policy interventions during the first two years of COVID-19.

COVID-19 has resulted in a shock to agrifood systems around the world, with the potential for low- and middle-income countries to be particularly affected. Although policy responses were more muted than during the 2007-2008 world food crisis, efforts to insulate from supply shocks and ensure local availability during COVID-19 have generally included export restrictions and import tariff reductions, among other responses. In an effort to enable rapid market monitoring and realignment, we develop a new indicator defined as a monthly nominal rate of protection "express" which seeks to indicate how policies enacted are affecting prices domestically in real-time in order to understand how they responded.