Agricultural commodity markets and trade

This book argues that the viability of many observed market and non-market interventions in agricultural products worldwide depends considerably on the underlying behavior of the relevant commodity markets. Many of these policies have had distortive impacts, resulting in much discussion and controversy in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round of trade negotiations. Despite the long history of studies of commodity market behavior, a number of issues remain unresolved. The authors review a wide range of these issues and provide a survey of current methodological and empirical research to increase understanding of the nature of commodity markets. Price behavior and the reliability of different prediction methods are examined and the particular implications for commodity dependent developing countries are also highlighted.--Publisher's description.