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International commodity markets have traditionally attracted the attention of economists, econometricians, and policy makers especially in and following politically tumultuous times. For instance, the primary commodity price boom of 1973/74 and the subsequent period of highly volatile world market prices initiated increased research on commodity markets which quickly focused on possible price stabilization schemes, particularly on buffer stocks. Simultaneously, the issue clearly advanced in priority on the political agenda, such that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) proposed an "Integrated Program for Commodities" (IPC) intended to stabilize the world market prices of ten so-called "core commodities"l (UNCTAD (1974, 1976a), Behrman (1979)). Many developing nations welcomed the IPC almost enthusiastically, but it did not receive more than lukewarm support by major industrialized countries, apparently due to the experience with some thirty international commodity agreements past World War II2. Critical evaluations have, among others, been presented by McNicol (1978), Gordon-Ashworth (1984), and Macbean & Nguyen (1987). The most detailed of these studies is Gordon-Ashworth's, who concludes that "on balance ... the performance of international commodity agreements has been too unreliable and their distributive effects too uneven to secure the development goals that have been set" (1984, p. 284)3. Consequently, the IPC turned out to be quite controversial a topic on the UNCTAD's 1976 meeting in Nairobi and has not been able to gain any impetus since. lThese were cocoa, coffee, copper, cotton, jute, rubber, sisal, sugar, tea, and tin.
List of contents
I: Price Stabilization on World Markets for Agricultural Products.- 1: On the Desirability of Price Stabilization.- 2: Non-Existence of Rational Expectations Equilibria.- 3: Price Dynamics in a Linear World.- II: Price Formation on the World Sugar Market.- 4: Characteristics of the Market.- 5: Quantitative Analysis of the World Sugar Market.- III: Price Stabilization on the World Sugar Market.- 6: The International Sugar Agreements.- 7: Structural Change on the World Sugar Market.- 8: Quantifying the Effects of the International Sugar Agreements.- Conclusions.- Appendix: Regression Diagnostics.- Al: Testing Procedures.- A1.1 Testing for Normality.- A1.2 Testing for Serial Independence.- A1.3 Testing for Heteroskedasticity.- A1.4 Testing for Non-Linearities.- A1.5 Testing for Structural Change.- A2: Regression Statistics and P-Values.- List of Abbreviations.- References.
