This paper explores how the elimination of Madagascar's Vanilla Marketing Board (VMB) in 1993 affected prices paid to farmers, incentives and indicators of poverty and inequality using household survey data and simulation analysis. Following the reforms, margins between FOB and farmgate prices...

An indispensable resource for active traders from the Hirsch Organization and John Person. Provides the best in investment data and statistics, in the same calendar format as the trusted annual Stock Trader's Almanac. The Commodity Trader's Almanac 2010 is your annual guide to commodities...

"My goal is to show the reader that the Soviet political and economic system was unstable by its very nature. It was just a question of when and how it would collapse. . . ."?From the Introduction to Collapse of an EmpireThe Soviet Union was an empire in many senses of the word?a vast mix of...

This is a companion to the Global Economic Prospects 2010. Most commodity prices reached historical highs in mid-2008, giving rise to the longest and broadest commodity boom of the post-WWII period. Apart from strong and sustained economic growth, the boom was fueled by numerous factors...

Intro -- MINERALS PRICE INCREASES AND VOLATILITY -- MINERALS PRICE INCREASES AND VOLATILITY -- CHAPTER SOURCES -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- Chapter 1 DRIVERS OF U.S. MINERAL DEMAND -- INTRODUCTION -- DRIVERS OF U.S. MINERAL DEMAND -- Population -- Consumption -- Construction -- Highways and Bridges...

A dynamic three-commodity rational-expectations storage model is used to compare the impact of the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act of 1996 with a free-market policy, and with pre-FAIR policies. Results suggest that FAIR did not lead to significant increases in long-run...

In this article we test whether the introduction of social insurance has led to a reduction in private insurance purchases and precautionary saving by examining the introduction of workers' compensation. Our empirical analysis is based on the financial decisions of over 7,000 households surveyed...