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While trade policies are considered strategic to shape national food systems and promote food security, the ultimate impact of trade openness on hunger is still highly debated. Using a sample of 81 developing over the period 2001–2016 and principally focusing on the prevalence of undernourishment, this study provides new empirical evidence. Firstly, it estimates the impact of total trade differentiating the effects that pass through changes in real per capita income—i.e. on the economic access to food—from the residual effects that it directly has on the other dimensions of food security. Subsequently, it concentrates on cereals trade, that usually is the most affected by trade restrictions and the most correlated to undernourishment. Finally, it explores the different effects of cereals trade in terms of imports and exports. Three main conclusions emerge: (a) trade openness contributes to lower the prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries and most of this effect is not income-mediated but, rather, passes through the impacts that it directly has on the other dimensions of food security; (b) such impacts are mostly driven by the trade openness of the cereals sector where (c) its import component turns out to play the main role.

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Among the determinants of economic freedom, the presence of different ethnic groups within a country has sometimes been explored by the empirical literature, without conclusive evidence on the sign of the relation, its drivers, and the conditions under which it holds. This paper offers new evidence by empirically modelling how ethnic fragmentation is related to economic freedom, as measured by the Economic Freedom Index and by each of its numerous areas, components and sub-components. The results provide insights on the components driving the effect and, interestingly, detect notable differences between developed and developing countries.