On the 1st of January 2021, African countries started the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). It is a largely symbolic step toward the long-term goal of economic integration on the African continent. The integration process includes an extensive agenda that requires time and will...

With the rising public awareness of poor social and environmental production conditions in many global value chains (GVCs), the pressure for more transparency and traceability is growing. Applications of distributed ledgers (DL) technologies such as blockchains are seen as a key solution in this...

A few weeks before the Brexit date of 31 October 2019, the big questions remain unanswered: Will Britain withdraw from the European Union? And if so, with or without a deal? These decisions not only affect the European Union and the United Kingdom itself, they also have consequences for the 79...

Risks related to commodity price volatility are a major thread to actors in commodity chains, particularly to smallholder farmers in low income countries. Therefore, price setting and transmission within global commodity chains are of crucial importance from a developmental and distributional...

The global spread of the corona virus is a massive challenge for countries in the Global South. Beyond the health crisis, many countries face economic turmoil linked to their dependence on commodities. Commodity markets have reacted strongly to the COVID-19 crisis with drastic price movements...

Many least developed countries (LDCs) face commodity dependence on the export and import side. This paper develops a structuralist computable general equilibrium model for commodity-dependent LDCs and simulates global commodity price shocks for Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Results show...

Cotton is one of the most important cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and has had an important role in job creation, poverty reduction and foreign exchange generation. SSA cotton exporters face particularly three interconnected challenges - how to increase yields and quality in the context...

The functioning of commodity markets has changed related to processes of financialization that involve two major developments - the rise of financial interest on commodity derivative markets through the increasing presence of financial investors and the changing business models of international...

Price instability is a major concern for commodity producers in developing countries. Commodity derivative markets have become the central pricing mechanism for international commodity trade. This is problematic given the high volatility and increased short-termism of these markets in the...

The European Union (EU) promotes the Free Trade Agreement with Vietnam (EVFTA) as an important milestone of its trade agenda. The agreement, whose part with EU-only issues is supposed to be ratified in 2019, is the most comprehensive one that the EU has concluded with a developing country so...