Journal Article
Commodity Prices and Intra-Household Labor Allocation
Volatility in commodity markets poses a distinct 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 Vietnam to...
Working Paper
The Impact of Domestic and International Commodity Price Volatility on Agricultural Income Instability
The extent to which commodity price volatility affects the income of producing households and their vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity depends on household diversification patterns and the degree of their exposure to markets. This article...
Blog
Commodities, industry, and the African Growth Miracle
by
John Page
April 2016
The 2016 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank occur during uncertain times for the “African Growth Miracle.” After...
Working Paper
Coffee price volatility and intra-household labour supply
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 Vietnam to...
Research Brief
The impact of the 2007-08 food price crisis in Brazil
The impact of the 2007–08 food price crisis in Brazil was relatively subdued compared with what took place in many other developing countries. Because the crisis potentially undermined both social inclusion and price stability, both important...
Working Paper
Resource-Led Growth - A Long-Term Perspective
Resource-Led Growth - A Long-Term Perspective surveys the 1870-1914 experience of growth in resource-rich economies: the so-called regions of recent settlement, some tropical countries and some mineral-based export economies. First, three contrasting...
Working Paper
Does Aid Mitigate External Shocks?
This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth...
Working Paper
Commodity Instability and Developing Countries
The significance of commodity price instability for the economic development of commodity-exporting countries has been perhaps the dominant theme in the postwar literature on the "commodity problem". One of the contending postwar views of the...
Blog
Surprises Ahead?
Tony Addison With six months remaining till the end of 2011, it’s time to take a peek into the near future. What can we expect? John Kenneth Galbraith...
Policy Brief
Policy Responses to the Global Economic Crisis in Africa
Africa is the developing region most at risk from the global economic crisis. Its recent strong growth has been interrupted. Already home to the largest number of low-income countries in the world, the region is now likely to experience higher...
Working Paper
Food Security in the South Pacific Island Countries with Special Reference to the Fiji Islands
This paper analyses the status of food security in selected South Pacific Island countries, namely Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu at the national and household levels during the period 1991...
Journal Article
The Economy-wide Impacts and Risks of Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Program
We estimate the impact of Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Program using an economy-wide approach. This approach yields benefit-cost ratios about 60% higher than existing partial equilibrium studies, a result of our accounting for indirect benefits...
Blog
Malawi's Farm Subsidy Benefits the Poor but Doesn't Come Cheap
by
Channing Arndt, Karl Pauw, James Thurlow
September 2015
Malawi’s farm input subsidy benefits the poor and can be part of a viable national development strategy. Agriculture is Malawi’s main economic sector...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (September-October 2015)
UNU-WIDER had a busy September. We celebrated our 30th birthday with some 600 people at our three-day conference on ‘Mapping the Future of Development...
Book
Commodities in Crisis
With the dramatic changes in the global political scene, many developing countries are re-evaluating their economic and political priorities. This reappraisal scrutinizes their dependence on specific commodities and the crisis into which this market...
Working Paper
Zambian Policy-Making and the Donor Community in the 1990s
The move towards multiparty democracy in Zambia in the early 1990s was heralded as the beginning of a new era of more pluralist politics in Africa. The new government’s willingness to adopt economic reforms and policies, hitherto resisted, was also...
Blog
What did we Learn at the L2C Conference about Industrial Development and Policy in Africa?
by
Roger Williamson
August 2013
22 August 2013 Roger Williamson Given the high growth rates since 2000 and low labour costs, Africa could develop manufacturing industry, agro...
Blog
Ghana’s Oil Resources Toward Economic Growth and Human Development
by
Robert Darko Osei
March 2012
Robert Darko Osei As the country’s oil production shifts into gear, Ghana’s new status as a middle-income country is bound to see a reduction in...
Book
Commodity Supply Management by Producing Countries
The collapse in commodity prices since 1980 has been a major cause of the economic crisis in a large number of developing countries. This book investigates whether the commodity-producing countries, by joint action, could have prevented the price...
Journal Article
Agricultural Commodity Price Shocks and Their Effect on Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa
Commodity price shocks are an important type of external shock and are often cited as a problem for economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. We choose nine Sub-Saharan African countries that are heavily dependent on a single agricultural commodity for...