The Role of Economic Analysis

The role of economic analysis in the Integrated Programme, and specifically in the Common Fund dialogue was seen as tangential by some, as integral and sorely lacking by others. Chapter 4 alluded to questions and disputes which might have been resolved through research and careful analysis and implied an element of wishful longing on both sides of the argument for the type of decisive data which would prove irrefutable and offset further debate. Any commodity scheme is likely to be easier to negotiate if it is prepared by a known objective method, if it estimates quantitatively the benefits it expects to offer to producers and consumers, and if it enables the balance of advantage to be adjusted simply during the course of negotiations. However, the art of theoretical and empirical economic analysis as applied to the control of international commodity trade is still tentative and far from providing concrete answers. The constraints that make this so, as well as the application of analysis which has been possible to date, are reviewed in the present chapter in an attempt to identify what analysis does have to offer to those in the position to make decisions on primary-commodity control. Particular attention is given to the role which information plays in both trade and analysis since problems of information gathering and sharing are of major interest to the producer associations and international commodity organizations with which UNCTAD deals and clearly fall within the organization’s purview. The chapter concludes by synthesizing points made in this and the previous chapter. The way in which the Secretariat coped with the dichotomy between demands for analysis and the threats posed by this is left until the concluding chapter.