No Nation Is Spared in This War

Dr. Prasad is a professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The war in Iran is having ripple effects worldwide. Rising energy, fertilizer and food prices will affect us all. From America, where consumers are paying $4 a gallon for gas, to rich European countries to large emerging market economies such as Brazil and China, no nation has been spared. Another group of countries, though, has suffered the most but received scant attention: the poorest countries.

Among them, nearly half of the average household’s spending goes to food and energy. With much of their populations at the edge of economic deprivation and with meager savings to fall back on, the price surge is........

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