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In Favour of a Fund to Stabilize Commodity Exporters' Income

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  • Cohen, Daniel
  • Villemot, Sébastien
  • Fally, Thibault

Abstract

Commodity prices are usually very slow to recover from adverse shocks. This is one of the reasons why it has proven so difficult either to smooth their effect or to stabilize them, and why it is sometimes argued that they should behave as if shocks were permanent. There is no reason however why countries should not find ways to protect themselves. This paper develops one practical idea on how this could be done. Our goal is not to stabilize prices, but to smooth the income of the producers. Countries, we assume, should get protection against deviation of commodity prices from a moving average of past prices. This avoids the pitfalls of past stabilization that attempted to stabilize around a single price and yet our scheme gives countries time to adjust to permanent shocks. Over a period of a 50 years time horizon, we simulate that the median cost would be worth about six months of exports.

Suggested Citation

  • Cohen, Daniel & Villemot, Sébastien & Fally, Thibault, 2006. "In Favour of a Fund to Stabilize Commodity Exporters' Income," CEPR Discussion Papers 5550, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5550
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Cashin & C. John McCDermott, 2002. "The Long-Run Behavior of Commodity Prices: Small Trends and Big Variability," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 49(2), pages 1-2.
    2. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    3. Cuddington, John T., 1992. "Long-run trends in 26 primary commodity prices : A disaggregated look at the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 207-227, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Cohen & Pierre Jacquet & Helmut Reisen, 2007. "Loans or Grants?," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 143(4), pages 764-782, December.
    2. Gianni Vaggi & Annalisa Prizzon, 2014. "On the sustainability of external debt: is debt relief enough?," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 38(5), pages 1155-1169.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Commodities; Low income countries; Stabilization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products

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