Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in many commodity prices. This report examines the question of whether commodity price volatility has materially changed with the rapid run up in world prices in 2006-09, followed by an equally sharp decline in many commodity prices. The report...

Spain and Denmark are two European countries differing considerably in their development and productive structures as well as in their internationalisation process. This affects many dimensions of each economy, most notably their trade volumes, market sizes and product specialization. Spain and...

This paper presents the Development Policy Evaluation Model (DEVPEM), a new simulation model which captures four critical aspects of rural economies in developing countries: (1) the role of the household as both a producer and a consumer of food crops; (2) high transaction costs of participating...

This paper provides technical documentation of the Development Policy Evaluation Model (DEVPEM model). It contains a discussion of the theoretical building blocks of the model; an overview of the data sources used for the simulations; and explanations of how household groups are categorized and...

This paper looks at commodity stocks, their role in price determination for storable commodities, and past efforts of international stockholding arrangements with economic provisions in stabilising world prices. Low stocks to use ratios of recent years were one of a number of contributory...

This paper builds on recent generalisations of theory and empirics of comparative advantage and establishes the relative importance of different sources of comparative advantage in explaining trade, with particular focus on policy and institutional factors. The broad policy and institutional...

Trade deficits and surpluses are sometimes attributed to intentionally low or high exchange rate levels. The impact of exchange rate levels on trade has been much debated but the large body of existing empirical literature does not suggest an unequivocally clear picture of the trade impacts of...

This paper examines, in France, the relationship between imports – and trade more generally – and employment. It builds on the burgeoning literature relating trade and labour markets, taking into account theories of firm-level trade and previous empirical work. The analysis in the paper...

We analyze the effects of trade liberalization on Mexican employment at an occupational level for the period from 1992 to 2009, ranking occupations by skill level. We find that the reduction in trade costs associated with Mexico's entry to NAFTA is related to larger employment expansions in...

This paper examines the role of exports in skill upgrading in the Korean manufacturing sector during the 1990s utilizing a unique plant-level panel data set. The empirical results indicate the important role of exports on relative employment on skilled versus unskilled workers. The main findings...