A production approach based on the translog cost function is used to analyze import demand for wheat differentiated by class and country of origin in the Japanese wheat flour milling industry. Results indicate that US wheat faces strong competition in the Japanese wheat market, but its multiple...

India is the largest producer and importer of pulses in the world. Since 1970, the Indian food economy has undergone major policy reforms, including trade liberalisation, that had the effect of opening up its domestic pulse market to international trade. This market is very lucrative and of...

Although a relatively small producer, Australia exports but about 90% of its cotton production, making it the third largest cotton exporter. This means that export performance plays a major role in determining the profitability of the Australian cotton industry. The primary aim was to determine...

Executive Directors commended Sudan's efforts to bring economic policies back on track and welcomed the establishment of a mechanism to save oil export receipts arising from higher-than-programmed oil prices, but underscored the need to strengthen budget control and monitoring systems. The audit...

Canada’s 2005 Article IV Consultation highlights that it has benefited from a strong institutional framework and continuing structural reforms. Inflation targeting and structural reforms have yielded an enviable macroeconomic performance, including the fastest growth rate and the...

This paper describes the United States recently enacted Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and assesses its quantitative impact on African exports. The AGOA expands the scope of preferential access of Africa's exports to the United States in key areas such as clothing. However, its medium...

This paper investigates the sensitivity of Latin American GDP growth to external developments using a Bayesian VAR model with informative steady-state priors. The model is estimated on quarterly data from 1994 to 2006 on key external and Latin American variables. It finds that 50 to 60 percent...

In this paper, the behaviour of Ghana’s imports during the period 1970-2002 is studied using disaggregated expenditure components of total national income. We use the newly developed bounds testing approach to cointegration and estimated an error correction model to separate the short- and...

Using annual Japanese fresh fruit import data from 1971-1997, this study analyzes the import patterns of Japan's seven most popular fresh fruits by implementing and testing a general differential demand system that nests four alternative import demand specifications. When tested against the...

Citrus fruits make up one-fifth of all fresh fruit consumed in the United States. Given the increasing importance of imported citrus in the diet of American consumers, it is perhaps surprising that no import demand analysis of U.S. citrus has been conducted. Using quarterly U.S. import data for...