Natural resources are being discovered in more countries, both rich and poor. Many of the new and aspiring resource exporters are low-income countries that are still receiving substantial levels of foreign aid. Resource discoveries open up enormous opportunities, but also expose producing...

This paper presents estimates of time-varying income elasticities of demand for energy and metal commodities. The analysis finds that the elasticities are close to unity, evaluated at world median per capita income levels. Furthermore, the estimates confirm that as income rises, demand growth...

This paper examines patterns of market integration for food commodities in India. First, it tests the extent of domestic spatial market integration for retail and wholesale markets in 2006?14 and 2008?15, respectively, and looks at patterns of price transmission of shocks from international...

Global commodity markets are affected by a variety of government policies that may expand or lower overall supply and as a result affect world prices for the specific products concerned. Market failures and market structures (market power along the value chain) also affect supply. This paper...

Venezuelaamp;apos;s agricultural sector is heavily regulated and protected. As part of structural adjustment, the government is considering major reform of its agricultural trade policies. The strategy is to introduce competition into the economy by removing government price controls and...

It has been argued that if several developing countries expand exports, they are likely to experience a decline in their terms of trade, export revenues, and real incomes. The general case for this export pessimism has lost much of its force, but remains very much alive for some specific...

In recent years, fluctuations in such macroeconomic variables as interest rates and exchange rates appear to have significantly affected primary commodity prices. This paper studies the relationship between commodity prices and various macroeconomic variables. It focuses particularly on interest...

This paper concerns an NGO intervention in agricultural commodity markets known as Fairtrade. Fairtrade pays producers a minimum unit price and provides capacity building support to member cooperative organizations. Fairtrade's organizational capacity support targets those factors believed to...

Rapid growth among the major emerging markets over the past 20 years has boosted global demand for commodities. The seven largest emerging markets accounted for almost all the increase in global consumption of metals, and two-thirds of the increase in energy consumption over this period. As...

This paper presents a model of bank risk taking and government guarantees. Levered banks take excessive risk, as their actions are not fully priced at the margin by debt holders. The impact of government guarantees on bank risk taking depends critically on the portion of bank investors that can...