Many governments have tried to stabilize commodity prices based on the widespread belief that households in developing countries – especially poorer ones – value price stability, defined here as the lack of fluctuations around a mean price level. We derive a measure of multivariate price...

Volatility in commodity markets poses an acute risk to farmers in developing countries who rely on cash crop agriculture. We combine a time series of international coffee prices with a long-running panel on coffee-growing households in Viet Nam to investigate coping mechanisms employed by...

Subsistence farmers in low income countries are confronted with multiple risks. Hence, small scale farmers have developed several strategies to cope with weather related risks in order to self-insure against weather risks. Recent developments on global food markets have increased food price...

Economic volatility remains a fact of life in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Household-level shocks create large consumption fluctuations, raising the incidence of poverty. Drawing on micro-level data from South Africa and Tanzania, we examine the vulnerability to shocks across household types (e.g....

This paper provides a review of the general concepts and influential findings of empirical research on risk-coping behavior and consumption smoothing arrangements in rural economies of developing countries. Low-income individuals live with high levels of risk and limited access to formal...