Over the past dozen years, policymakers have largely abandoned long-standing popular approaches for addressing risk in agriculture without fully resolving the question of how best to manage the negative consequences of volatile agricultural markets. The article reviews the transition from past...

Returns to storage for crude oil reserves contain both a cost-reducing component (consistent with Kaldor's original notion of convenience) and often sizable premiums associated with the dispersion of petroleum prices.Innovations in futures, options, and derivative instruments permit active...

In 1995, 57 countries depended on three commodities for more than half their exports, reports UNCTAD. And commodities, fuels, grains, and oilseeds are important imports for several countries. The notorious volatility of commodity prices is a major source of instability and uncertainty in...

Derivatives exchanges can offer emerging market economies certain important benefits, including risk transfer, price discovery, and more public information. But they are not a substitute for reform of financial, capital, and commodity markets.Tsetsekos and Varangis examine the architecture,...

Fully liberalizing Cote d'Ivoire's export marketing system is expected to improve producers' incomes and marketing efficiency. And the benefits from liberalization should outweigh the costs from eliminating fixed producer prices and public forward sales.Cote d'Ivoire has historically taxed cocoa...

Liberalization in commodity markets has brought profound changes in the way price risks are allocated and managed in commodity subsectors. Price risks are increasingly allocated to private traders and farmers rather than absorbed by the government. The success of market reform depends on the...

Poor households in rural areas are particularly vulnerable to risks that reduce incomes and increase expenditures. Most past research has focused on risk-coping strategies for the rural poor, specially on micro-level and household actions. These are risks that can been shared within a community...