The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of firms remains unclear. We reconstruct the...

Economic opinion is in the process of re-interpreting low levels of uptake of non-reciprocal pre-ferential trade agreements (PTAs) partly in terms of administrative barriers to preference utiliza-tion. Primary amongst these barriers are Rules of Origin. This paper reviews the literature on Rules...

This paper examines the revenue effects of certified organic contract farming and of use of organic farming methods in a tropical African context. These are compared with 'organic by default' conventional farming systems without contractual relations. Survey data from a medium-size cocoa-vanilla...

East Africa is undergoing a natural resource boom that has the potential to reshape national economies and development aid in the region. Questions remain whether key Danish development partners, including Tanzania, Mozambique, and Uganda, can harness newfound oil, gas, and minerals for...

The paper's background is a revival of the historically dominant narrative on the large-scale and plantation farming (LSF and PF) in Africa, in reaction to the contemporary phenomenon of 'land grabbing'. The historical antecedents of this narrative are examined and its central contentions - that...

Commodity derivatives have been traded for well over a century, often stimulating calls for stricter regulation during periods of major commodity price inflation or deflation. The 2000s, when a sharp rise in commodity prices coincided with a spectacular rise in participation in derivatives...

The largest Commodity Trading Houses account for a large and increasing share of international trade, linked arguably to their financialization and - according to some commentators - giving rise to issues of 'systemic importance' similar to those applying to large investment banks. This paper...

This DIIS report examines US trade policy during the first ten months of Donald Trump's presidency, up to early November 2017. It identifies the main points of Trump's trade policy and compares them to mainstream US trade policy since the 1970s. It then documents the extent to which they have...

Labour market segmentation in developing countries has been considered in a growing literature, some of which suggests an informal sector wage premium. However, such studies have mainly focused on urban labour markets and have not discriminated between the informally self-employed and wage...

Contract farming is often seen as a panacea to many of the challenges faced by agricultural production in developing countries. Given the large heterogeneity of contract farming arrangements, it is debatable whether all kinds of contract farming arrangements offer benefits to participating...