We study the incentives of selfish governments to tax tradable primary inputs under asymmetric trade. Using an empirically-consistent model of endogenous growth, we obtain explicit links between persistent gaps in productivity growth and the observed tendency of resource-exporting (importing)...

The dramatic price falls of 2014-2015 marked the end of the most powerful and enduring commodity boom since the Second World War. Now in its third edition, this book acts as a guide to the ins and outs of the primary commodity universe. Updates to this edition reflect on the consequences of both...

The 2010s have been a dramatic period for most primary commodity markets. Producers suffered heavily as prices fell in response to new supply facilities going into production, juxtaposed against disappointing demand evolution from China in particular, marking the end of the most powerful and...

This paper extends the classical exhaustible-resource/stock-pollution model with the irreversibility of pollution decay. Within this framework, we answer the question how the potential irreversibility of pollution affects the extraction path. We investigate the conditions under which the economy...

Policies to address environmental and natural resource management are often implemented at the group level. The defining feature of such policies is that penalties or rewards are based on group rather than individual performance, or rights are allocated to a group rather than to individuals....

"The antecedent to the present work is Marian Radetzki's book A Guide to Primary Commodities in the World Economy, published by Blackwell in 1990, three decades ago. In that book Radetzki presented the gist of what he had learnt over the 30 preceding years of active study and research on...

Introduction -- The historical framework -- The geography of commodity production and trade -- Comparative advantage and the trade policy distortions -- The fossil fuels -- Price formation and price trends in commodities -- Commodity booms -- The commodity exchanges, commodity investments and...