Commodity price shocks are an important type of external shock and are often cited as a problem for economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper quantifies the impact of agricultural commodity price shocks using a near vector autoregressive model. The novel aspect of this model is that we...

Modelling the underlying long-run trend of metal prices is important, given that selected metals are a source of income for many countries. However, estimating the underlying trend has proven to be difficult, given the persistence and volatility of primary commodity prices-metals are no...

We examine the effect of pandemics on selected commodity prices-in particular, those of zinc, copper, lead, and oil. We set up a vector autoregressive model and analyse data since the mid-nineteenth century to determine how prices reacted to pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu, 1957 Asian...

This paper examines the occurrence of structural breaks in European unemployment associated with major events experienced by the European economies at an institutional level: the creation of the European and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999, and the Euro/financial crisis in 2008-2009, which was...

The purpose of this shorter paper is to estimate the trend of 18 th century British slave prices. We apply robust econometric procedures on slave price data constructed by Whatley (2018) over the period 1699 to 1807 and find evidence of a structural break in 1740, thereby advocating a broken...

This paper examines the extent to which increases in international food prices during the past few years have been transmitted to domestic prices in selected Asian developing countries. In analyzing the historical data, evidence on price transmission for important food commodities such as rice,...

This paper makes a threefold contribution to the underlying dynamic properties and causal effects of energy prices. Firstly, the paper makes a study of the underlying trends to help identify the time series path of nonrenewable energy resources, which can have far reaching consequences for...

The recent slowdown of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has led to question to what extent the PRC demand of commodities can have an impact on commodity prices. We take into account the fact that commodity prices are characterized by structural breaks, and to this end we make use of novel...

Although it is not a new phenomenon, in recent years inequality has moved to the top of the political agenda given the concern that will result in political instability and social resentment. Persistence in inequality can further undermine economic growth and development by hindering educational...