Economists have debated whether the Soviet Union subsidized trade with its Eastern European partners in the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). Effective January 1, 1991, former CMEA members implemented their"switchover"decision to convert to world market prices denominated in...

In 1995, 57 countries depended on three commodities for more than half their exports, reports UNCTAD. And commodities, fuels, grains, and oilseeds are important imports for several countries. The notorious volatility of commodity prices is a major source of instability and uncertainty in...

Policies and external shocks affecting agriculture, the main source of income for rural households, can be expected to have a significant impact on poverty. The authors study the case of Uganda. Throughout the 1990s, more than 90 percent of its poor lived in rural areas and, during the same...

The authors theoretically analyze country funds, focusing on emerging economies in which capital markets are not readily accessible to outside investors. They study country-fund pricing and the associated policy implications under alternative variations on segmentation of international markets....

This paper addresses the issues of antidumping actions. It surveys all the anticartel cases preceded or followed by related antidumping cases existing in the recent European Community (EC) experience. The paper focuses on the major twin cases which have occurred in two predominant petrochemical...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the rational expectations hypothesis for the econometric modeling of primary commodity markets. Muth's Rational Expectations Hypothesis (REH) revolutionized economic theory and modeling on price formation in a simple agricultural...

The hypothesis that the price adjustment to nominal shocks is instantaneous has been part of the monetarist approach explaining the inflationary process in Argentina. But the authors argue that monetary and exchange rate policies have had different effects on relative prices and thus have a...

This paper establishes a simple general equilibrium trade model to estimate the effects of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) on world trade in clothing, especially on exports from developing countries. The MFA greatly affects developing countries because the MFA restrictions are imposed...

Cote d'Ivoire has historically taxed cocoa producers. Market reforms over the past 10 years have somewhat succeeded in making domestic and foreign marketing more transparent and competitive. But they have not done much to raise producer prices in real terms or as a share of the FOB (free on...

Many developing countries use preshipment inspection (PSI) firms to counter the adverse effects on their foreign trade of certain pricing and business practices. These firms may also perform some national customs functions, but their key responsibility is normally to verify that imports (and...