noted the importance of a social safety net for preventing famines.

"The literature on famines reviewed here has suggested that failures of both market and nonmarket institutions lie at the heart of famine causation; so it can be argued that famines can be ameliorated by longer-term development policies which strengthen the social and economic institutions (both governmental and non-governmental) which help protect poor people from economy-wide shocks," he wrote.

"Evidence in the famines literature and elsewhere also suggests that an effective social safety net for protecting poor households from severe shocks is consistent with longer-term goals of economic growth and environmental protection."

Holmes also gave Paul a chance to respond to a controversy that ensued after the tea party audience at Monday night's Republican presidential debate cheered the notion that an uninsured man in a coma would be left to die.

"This whole idea that they world will not provide for people if you don't depend on government -- freedom provides more prosperity and better health care than all the socialism and welfarism in the world," Paul said. "Nobody can compete with me about compassion because I know and understand how free markets and sound money and a sensible foreign policy is the most compassionate system ever known to mankind. So if you care about people you have to look to the freedom philosophy and limited government."