Agricultural Commodity Markets and Trade: New Approaches to Analyzing Market Structure and Instability

This book argues that the viability of many observed market and non-market interventions in agricultural products worldwide depends considerably on the underlying behaviour of the relevant commodity markets. Many of these policies have had distortive impacts, resulting in much discussion and controversy in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of trade negotiations. Despite the long history of studies of commodity market behaviour, a number of issues remain unresolved. The authors review a wide range of these issues and provide a survey of current methodological and empirical research to increase our understanding of the nature of commodity markets. Price behaviour and the reliability of different prediction methods are examined and the particular implications for commodity dependent developing countries are also highlighted. This state-of-the-art survey of agricultural commodity market behaviour will prove to be of immense interest to researchers, students and academics in the fields of agricultural market analysis, development studies and economics. The book will also strongly appeal to policymakers in both agricultural trading countries and international agencies and to private commodity market analysts.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Foreword Hartwig de Haen Introduction David Hallam and Alexander Sarris 1. Properties of International Commodity Prices: Identifying Trends, Cycles and Shocks Paul Cashin and C. John McDermott 2. Trends and Volatility in Agricultural Commodity Prices Christopher L. Gilbert 3. Forecasting Commodity Prices: Futures versus Judgement Chakriya Bowman and Aasim M. Husain 4. Is the Storage Model a ‘Closed’ Empirical Issue? The Empirical Ability of the Storage Model to Explain Price Dynamics Carlo Cafiero and Brian D. Wright 5. Theoretical Advances in the Modeling of Storage and Speculation Eugenio Bobenrieth, Juan Bobenrieth and Brian D. Wright 6. Imperfect Competition and International Agricultural Commodity Markets Steve McCorriston 7. Spatial Integration and Price Transmission in Agricultural Commodity Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa Awudu Abdulai 8. Market Integration and Price Transmission in Selected Food and Cash Crop Markets of Developing Countries: Review and Applications George Rapsomanikis, David Hallam and Piero Conforti 9. Measuring the Efficiency of Food Markets: The Case of Nicaragua Donald F. Larson 10. Do Cotton Prices Follow Polyester Prices? John Baffes and Gaston Gohou 11. Weather and Index-based Insurance for Developing Countries: Experience and Possibilities Jerry R. Skees, Jason Hartell and Jianqiang Hao 12. Approaches to Managing Coffee Price Risks Panos Varangis and Bryan Lewin 13. The Use of Futures and Options to Insure Wheat Import Price Risks by Low-Income Food Deficit Countries Alexander Sarris, Piero Conforti and Adam Prakash 14. How Can Agricultural Commodity Producers Appropriate a Greater Share of Value Chain Incomes? Raphael Kaplinsky 15. Commodities, Diversification and Poverty Reduction John Humphrey 16. Assessing the Impact of WTO Reforms on World Agricultural Markets: A New Approach Thomas W. Hertel and Roman Keeney 17. Conclusions Alexander Sarris and David Hallam Index

About the Author :
Edited by Alexander Sarris, Professor of Economics University of Athens, Greece and David Hallam, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy