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Working Paper
The Environment as a Commodity
130 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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The role of the construction sector in GhanaThe research explores the structure and performance of Ghana’s construction subsector, in light of the country’s 2007 oil discovery. Using primary and secondary data resources, we discuss how marginal costs and expenditure shocks may vary within the...
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 CountriesThe 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...
Working Paper
Inflation, Output and Perfectly Enforceable Price Controls in Orthodox and Heterodox Stabilization ProgrammesThe paper deals with the success of price controls in stabilizing high inflation rates and their effects on the real economy under an imperfect competition setting derived by optimal maximization. Our model builds on Helpman’s work of price controls...
Journal Article
Commodity Prices and Intra-Household Labor AllocationVolatility 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
Falling oil prices and sustainable energy transitionFossil-fuel subsidies are economically inefficient and harmful for the environment yet efforts to phase them out at the national and international levels have not been effective. The existing international legal framework is too weak and fragmented...
Working Paper
Regional Output Differences in International PerspectiveAccurate regional estimates of output are desired as an indicator of level of development and as a variable used to explain internal migration, demand patterns, fertility and other aspects of behaviour. This chapter explores one often neglected...
Working Paper
Monetary Policy in the Franc ZoneThis paper examines to what extent the central bank for the West African Economic and Monetary Union (BCEAO) has used interest rate policy in response to domestic economic developments. We show that while in the long run the BCEAO matches changes in...
Working Paper
Revisiting the Global Food ArchitectureThe 2008 episode of food price explosion, political turmoil, and human suffering revealed important flaws in the current global food architecture. This paper argues that to safeguard the strengths of the current system, four failures in market...
Working Paper
Coffee price volatility and intra-household labour supplyVolatility 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...
Working Paper
The role of the construction sector in influencing natural resource use, structural change, and industrial development in ZambiaThe construction sector plays a critical role in delivering quality infrastructure, which in turn influences the use of natural resource revenues towards achieving structural change and industrial development. We use industrial organization and...
Working Paper
Will the Emergence of the Euro Affect World Commodity Prices?The emergence of the euro as a key currency, perhaps eventually rivalling the US dollar in importance, may have important macroeconomic implications for industrial as well as developing economies in the years ahead. This paper focuses on two related...
Journal Article
When do relative prices matter for measuring income inequality?Changes in relative prices of commodities consumed in different shares across income groups can be expected to alter real income differentials between these groups. Using Mozambican household budget survey and price data from 2002/03 and 2008/09, we...
Blog
Getting Serious About Food
Luc Christiaensen Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER At the G8 July summit in Aquila, Italy, US$ 20 billion was pledged to support farmers in poorer...
Working Paper
The Impact of Food Price Volatility on Consumer Welfare in CameroonThe objective of this paper is to analyse the welfare effects of food price volatility on Cameroonian consumers. Using data from the third Cameroonian Household Consumption Surveys, the price elasticities are obtained from a Quadratic Almost Ideal...
Displaying 16 of 130 results