The argument for effective financial regulation to curb financial activity and associated volatility in primary commodity markets is now more compelling than ever, in the context of the renewed increase in food prices. However, as in much other financial regulation, the devil is in the detail....

The homogenisation of finance that has dramatically increased the proclivity to instability and crisis is directly related to the very structure of regulations that have discouraged different types of institutions from emerging and/or and surviving. In developing countries they have the further...