The 2007-2008 upsurge in agricultural commodity prices gave rise to widespread concern about investors causing a "global land rush". Large land deals can provide opportunities for better access to capital, transfer of technology, and advances in productivity and employment generation. But they...

This paper studies the volatility of commodity prices on the basis of a large dataset of monthly prices observed in international trade data from the United States over the period 2002 to 2011. The conventional wisdom in academia and policy circles is that primary commodity prices are more...

World Bank economists expect GDP growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to continueat a modest pace of 1.5 percent in 2019, slightly down from 1.6 percent in 2018. The declme reflectsa contraction in one large economy, which more than offsets growth in other countries. In the...

La premiere partie du present rapport examine les perspectives de croissance a court et a moyen terme des pays de la region Moyen-Orient et Afrique du Nord (MENA). Elle indique que la region devrait enregistrer un taux de croissance modeste de 0,6 % en 2019, qui devrait monter a 2,6 % en 2020 et...

I present a theory explaining why less technologically advanced countries could be more vulnerable to the Dutch disease. In a bilateral trade model with monopolistic competition and increasing returns to scale, the extent of the crowding-out in the tradable sector depends positively on an...

Policymakers in oil-exporting countries confront the question of how to allocate oil revenues among consumption, saving, and investment in the face of high income volatility. We study this allocation problem in a precautionary saving and investment model under uncertainty. Consistent with data...