West African households were particularly affected by the food price crisis of 2007-08. As these households depend on markets for two-thirds of their food supplies, prices have become a key determinant of access to food. However, food prices are 30-40% higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in the...

The increasing use of food commodities for biofuel production has substantial impact on prices and quantities of these and other food commodities. It is therefore likely that this trend also intensifies the competition for arable land. However, evidence for this hypothesis is generated by...

The economic effects of climate change on agriculture have been widely assessed in the last two decades. Many of these assessments are based on the integration of biophysical and agro-economic models, allowing to understand the physical and socio-economic responses of the agricultural sector to...

During the commodity price spikes in 2007-08 and 2010-11, several countries implemented temporary export restrictions on staple foods in an attempt to protect domestic consumers from rising and volatile prices. The impacts of these policies, however, are not limited to the countries that are...

Les ménages ouest-africains sont particulièrement touchés par la flambée des prix de 2007-08. Ils dépendent des marchés pour deux-tiers de leurs approvisionnements. Les prix sont désormais un facteur clé de l'accessibilité économique à l’alimentation. Ils sont plus élevés de 30 à...

This paper relates to internet, noise trading and commodity futures prices. The theoretical framework is the Mixture Distribution Hypothesis (MDH) that posits a joint dependence of return volatility and information. We use two different proxies for the observed component of information flows,...

This paper examines spatial integration of food grain markets in India. Using the maximum likelihood method of cointegration, it investigates whether regional food grain markets within and across states are spatially linked or not. The cointegration tests provide evidence in favour of spatial...

This paper examines volatility transmission in oil, ethanol and corn prices in the United States between 1997 and 2011. We follow a multivariate GARCH approach to evaluate the level of interdependence and the dynamics of volatility across these markets. The estimation results indicate a higher...

In order to study the costs/benefits of a monetary union between Germany and France, we attempt to go beyond a mere focus on asymmetries and examine what each country would have lost or gained had there been a common monetary policy. We try to identify the macroeconomic effects of such a change...