Export restrictions and price insulation during commodity price booms

Abstract

Prices of grains and other storable are characterized by long periods in the doldrums, punctuated by short but intense price spikes (Deaton and Laroque 1992). Those spikes are of concern not least because they can have large impacts on poverty in developing countries (Ivanic and Martin 2008). Accounts of the food price spikes of 1973–74, 2006–8 and 2010–11 include discussion of a wide range of contributing factors such as exogenous shocks to supply or demand, below-trend stock levels, speculative behavior, and trade policy responses to the shock. Johnson (1975) emphasizes policy responses in his analysis of the 1973–74 price spike, as have most of the available assessments of the 2006–08 shock (Baffes and Haniotis 2010;Bouët and Laborde 2010;Hochman et al. 2010; Robles, Torero and von Braun 2008). Show more