Primary commodities are used as inputs into all production processes, yet they account for approximately 16 percent of world trade. Despite their share in trade, we show that the aggregate gains from trade are largely understated if we ignore key features of commodities: low price elasticities...

We develop a dynamic model of a small open economy that trades commodities whose world prices are subject to realistic random fluctuations, and study the implications of monetary policy alternatives. The model is much more flexible than those of previous studies, especially in allowing to...

A factor-price frontier framework is used to clarify the analogy of an increase (decrease) in raw material prices with that of autonomous technological regress (progress). Factor-price profiles estimated for the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan bring out the major role of...

Persistent differences in interest rates across countries account for much of the profitability of currency carry trade strategies. "Commodity currencies'' tend to have high interest rates while low interest rate currencies belong to exporters of finished goods. This pattern arises in a...

This is the first study to present a unified quantitative account of African commodity trade in the long 19th century from the zenith of the Atlantic slave trade (1790s) to the eve of World War II (1939). Drawing evidence from a new dataset on export and import prices, volumes, composition and...