does oil price variability affect asean exchange rates evidence from panel cointegration test abstractusing panel data this article investigates the long run relationship between real oil prices and real exchange rates for selected asean countries by utilizing quarterly data from 1973 q1 to 2013 q4 the modelling implementation starts with the determination of the stationarity condition of the variables which are found to be integrated of order one using maddala and wu s 1999 panel cointegration test the article finds evidence of cointegration among the variables the fully modified ols fmols and dynamic ols dols are then used to estimate the long run relationship between the variables followed by applying toda yamamoto causality test the findings exhibit bidirectional causality between real oil prices and real exchange rates in the long run where it is highly significant

the effect of land scarcity on farm structure empirical evidence from mali abstractwe analyze the individualization of farm units in mali in the sense of a transformation of purely collective farms into mixed units in which private plots coexist with collective fields since a moral hazard in team problem plagues production on the latter and the household head extracts his income from it he faces a trade off between efficiency and capture we show within the framework of a patriarchal farm household model that private plots become profitable for the head once land becomes sufficiently scarce specifically greater land scarcity raises both the probability to find private plots in afarm and the share of farmland allocated to these plots on the basis of firsthand data collected in southern mali we test and confirm the two predictions yielded by the above theory moreover we show that a higher number of married men within the household has the same effect as land scarcity thus suggesting an interesting refinement of the moral hazard in team argument

reassessing the empirical relationship between the oil price and the dollar abstract this paper aims at reassessing the empirical relationship between the real price of oil and the u s dollar real effective exchange rate over the 1974 2015 period we find that changes in both variables are now linked by a negative relationship going from the dollar exchange rate to the real oil price however the same relationship is found positive when ending the sample in the mid 2000s in line with the previous literature to understand and investigate this evolution we rely on a nonlinear smooth transition regression model in which the oil price dollar nexus depends on the dynamics followed by the u s currency our results show that the relationship is negative most of the times but turns positive when the dollar hits very high values as in the early eighties

forecasting the real price of oil time variation and forecast combination abstract this paper sheds light on the questions whether it is possible to generate an accurate forecast of the real price of oil and how it can be improved using forecast combinations for this reason the following paper will investigate the out of sample performance of seven individual forecasting models the results show that it is possible to construct better forecasts compared to a no change benchmark for horizons up to 24 months with gains in the mspe ratio as high as 25 in addition some of the existing models will be extended e g the u s inventories model by introducing more suitable real time measures for the brent crude oil price and the var model of the global oil market by using different measures for the economic activity furthermore the time performance investigated by constructing recursively estimated mspe ratios discovers potential weaknesses of the used models hence several different combination approaches are tested with the goal of demonstrating that a combination of individual models is beneficial for the forecasting performance thereby a combination consisting of four models has proven to have a lower mspe ratio than the best individual models over the medium run and in addition to be remarkably stable over time

gender social norms and household production in burkina faso abstractempirical studies of intrahousehold allocation have revealed that in many instances gender is an important determinant in the allocation of resources within the household yet within the theoretical literature why gender matters within the household remains an open question in this article we propose a simple model of intrahousehold allocation based on a particular social institution for the organization of agricultural production practiced among certain ethnic groups in west africa we highlight how this institution while resolving certain problems of commitment and informational asymmetry can also lead to a gendered pattern in the allocation of productive resources and consumption within the household using a survey of agricultural households in burkina faso we show consistent with this theory that plots owned by the head of the household are farmed more intensively and achieve higher yields than plots with similar characteristics owned by other household members male and female fam

emerging economies business cycles the role of commodity terms of trade news abstract recent empirical work has challenged the hypothesis that terms of trade shocks are an important source of cyclical fluctuations in emerging economies we show that ignoring the news component in the terms of trade movements results in misleading conclusions about their importance as a source of cyclical fluctuations using a sample of latin american countries we identify news augmented commodity terms of trade ctot shocks by maximizing the forecast error variance share of the ctot series at a finite future horizon our identification does not rely on zero impact restrictions typically used in the literature for recovering news shocks accounting for news almost doubles the contribution of ctot to explain cyclical fluctuations news augmented ctot shocks explain almost half of output variations in emerging economies

empowering women inheritance rights female education and dowry payments in india this paper examines the impact of gender progressive reforms to the inheritance law in india on women s outcomes despite stipulating that daughters would have equal shares as sons in ancestral property i find that the reform failed to increase the actual likelihood of women inheriting property instead parents appear to be gifting their share of land to their sons in order to circumvent the law however parents also appear to be compensating their daughters for such disinheritance by giving them alternative transfers in the form of either higher dowries or more education following the reform

tail events a new approach to understanding extreme energy commodity prices abstract this paper shows that extreme energy price changes located in the 10 tails of the distribution cluster across energy futures markets during the boom bust cycle of 2006 to 2012 using multinominal logit regressions we find that the coincidence of such tail events cannot be explained solely by common supply and demand fundamentals instead we provide evidence that the transmission of extreme price changes occurs through a financial demand channel specifically changes in the net long position of hedge funds are associated with a significant increase in the probability of coincident large positive and negative returns across energy markets evidence that index investments drive tail events is limited further we identify adverse shocks to speculator funding liquidity as determinant of synchronized price drops across energy markets the likelihood of extreme negative returns in more than one market significantly increases when the ted spread rises

the impact of uncertainty shocks on the volatility of commodity prices in this paper we empirically examine the impact of uncertainty shocks on the volatility of commodity prices using several alternative measures of economic uncertainty for the u s we estimate their effects on commodity price volatility through var analysis we find that the latent uncertainty shocks have the most significant impact on commodity price volatility when compared to observable measures of economic uncertainty in specific our results show that the unobservable economic uncertainty measures of jurado et al 2015 have a significant and long lasting positive effect on the volatility of commodity prices our findings indicate that a positive shock in unobservable macroeconomic and financial uncertainty leads to a persistent increase in the volatility of the broad commodity market index and of individual commodity prices with the macroeconomic effect being more significant finally we show that the impact is stronger in energy commodities compared to agricultural and metals markets

as a husband i will love lead and provide gendered access to land in ghana summary improving women s access to land is high on the agricultural policy agenda of both governmental and non governmental agencies yet the determinants and rationale of gendered access to land are not well understood this paper argues that gender relations are more than the outcomes of negotiations within households it explains the importance of social norms perceptions and formal and informal rules shaping access to land for male and female farmers at four levels 1 the household family 2 the community 3 the state and 4 the market the framework is applied to ghana using the results from qualitative field work norms on household and family organization and on men s and women s responsibilities and capabilities play a key role in gendered allocation of resources however these norms and perceptions are dynamic and evolve jointly with the development of markets and changes in values of inputs such as labor and land theoretical models that represent the gendered distribution of assets as the result of intrahousehold bargaining should be revised and extrahousehold factors should be included from a policy perspective laws that ensure gender equality in terms of inheritance and a more gender equitable distribution of property upon divorce can play a key role in improving women s property rights yet their impact may be limited where customary rights dominate and social norms and rules continue to discriminate according to gender

commodity currencies and commodity prices modelling static and time varying dependence abstractthis article employs the copula approach to study the relationship between exchange rates and commodity prices for large commodity exporters using data for the nominal exchange rates of four commodity currencies australian canadian and new zealand dollars and norwegian krone against the us dollar and the relevant country specific commodity price indices constructed on a daily basis we find 1 a positive dependence between the values of commodity currencies and commodity indices i e a commodity index increases when a respective currency appreciates and provides several explanations for this finding 2 no major asymmetries in the tail dependence for most pairs of exchange rates and commodity indices and 3 a pronounced increase in the time varying tail dependence following the global financial crisis

non farm work and food security among farm households in northern ghana this paper examines the impact of non farm work on household income and food security among farm households in the northern region of ghana we analyze the impact by employing propensity score matching method that accounts for self selection bias the matching results show that participation in non farm work exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on household income and food security status supporting the widely held view that income from non farm work is crucial to food security and poverty alleviation in rural areas of developing countries

estimating and forecasting the real prices of crude oil a data rich model using a dynamic model averaging dma approach given that oil price fluctuations have been of great interest for macroeconomics in the recent years due to its important implications for future inflation economic growth and policy making the aim of this paper is to estimate and forecast west texas intermediate wti crude oil prices using a large monthly dataset that covers the period from march 1983 to december 2011 to achieve this aim forecasting with factor models offers a usual approach that utilizes large datasets however a forecasting model which simply includes all factors in state space equation and does not allow for time varying may be not suitable with a highly volatile market such as oil market to overcome these limitations an approach that accounts both for parameter and model uncertainty is employed in particular this study uses the dynamic model averaging dma approach suggested by koop and korobilis 2012 the key element of the dma approach is that it allows both for model and parameter to vary at each point of time by doing so the dma is robust to structural breaks empirical findings show that dma approach outperforms any other alternative model used in the forecasting exercise results also show that there is model but not parameter variation in this oil price forecasting exercise finally the findings suggest that the dma approach provides a better proxy of expected spot prices than future prices

determining market power exertion between buyers and sellers empirical techniques commonly used in industrial organization to measure market power exertion typically assume imperfectly competitive behaviour by firms on only one side of the market firms on the other side are assumed to be perfectly competitive in this paper we extend traditional neio methods by developing a method to estimate market power exertion when firms on both sides have potential market power using monte carlo simulations we find that the model correctly estimates market power exercised by firms on either or both sides of a market and also correctly estimates firms technology parameters when applied to the us leaf tobacco market findings indicate that cigarette manufacturers exert some monopsony power in purchasing leaf tobacco while producers organized as a cartel exhibit no countervailing monopoly market power copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

gender property rights and natural resources abstract attention to gender differences in property rights can improve the outcomes of natural resource management policies and projects in terms of efficiency environmental sustainability equity and empowerment of resource users although it is impossible to generalize across cultures and resources it is important to identify the nature of rights to land trees and water held by women and men and how they are acquired and transmitted from one user to another the paper particularly examines how the shift from customary tenure systems to private property in land trees and water has affected women the effect of gender differences in property on collective action and the implications for project design

does women s land ownership promote their empowerment empirical evidence from nepal land rights equity is seen as an important tool for increasing empowerment and economic welfare for women in developing countries accordingly the objective of this paper is to empirically examine the role of women s land ownership either alone or jointly as a means of improving their intra household bargaining power in the areas of own healthcare major household purchases and visiting family or relatives using the 2001 and 2011 nepal demographic and health surveys and relevant econometric techniques we find that land ownership has a positive and significant impact on women s empowerment in particular we find two important patterns of results first accounting for the endogeneity of land ownership with inverse probability weighting coarsened exact matching and instrumental variable methods makes its impact on empowerment higher previous research in this area had largely ignored the potential endogeneity of land ownership second the impact is generally stronger in 2011 than in 2001 as evidenced in a number of empirical studies the increase in women s bargaining power can in turn translate into a redirection of resources toward women s preferences including higher investment in human capital of the household such as education health and nutrition therefore our study indicates that in places where agriculture is the main source of economy for women policies enhancing land rights equity have the potential to increase women s empowerment and associated beneficial welfare effects

explaining gender differentials in agricultural production in nigeria this paper uses data from the general household survey panel 2010 11 to analyze differences in agricultural productivity across male and female plot managers in nigeria the analysis utilizes the oaxaca blinder decomposition method which allows for decomposing the unconditional gender gap into i the portion caused by observable differences in the factors of production endowment effect and ii the unexplained portion caused by differences in returns to the same observed factors of production structural effect the analysis is conducted separately for the north and south regions excluding the west of the country the findings show that in the north women produce 28 percent less than men after controlling for observed factors of production while there are no significant gender differences in the south in the decomposition results the structural effect in the north is larger than the endowment at the mean although women in the north have access to less productive resources than men the results indicate that even if given the same level of inputs significant differences still emerge however for the south the decomposition results show that the endowment effect is more important than the structural effect access to resources explains most of the gender gap in the south and if women are given the same level of inputs as men the gap will be minimal the difference in the results for the north and south suggests that policy should vary by region

gender inequalities in ownership and control of land in africa myth and reality lack of clarity behind measurement and interpretation of statistics on gender and land leads to an inability to clearly articulate a policy response to the potential inequalities faced by women and men this article sets out to explore conceptually and empirically the levels and relative inequalities in land rights between women and men in african countries the first section of the article engages in a conceptual discussion of how to measure gendered land outcomes what ownership and control mean in different contexts and why attention to these factors is important for the development of gender and land statistics the second section of the article systematically reviews existing evidence from microlevel large sample studies to summarize recent trends in land access ownership and control by sex the third section presents new statistics from a variety of nationally representative and large scale unpublished data on gender and land in africa results provide not only a nuanced understanding of the importance of measuring land indicators for gendered development in africa and globally but also new statistics on a variety of land outcomes to aid stakeholders in the discussion of gender land inequalities

land rights gender equality and household food security exploring the conceptual links in the case of india this paper seeks to critically examine the conceptual linkages between the issue of land rights for women with household food security on the one hand and gender equality on the other after a brief analysis of shifts in both international and national policy discourse and practice in terms of control over land as vital for food security it seeks to analyse the implications of this for gender relations the paper argues that in a context of diversified rural livelihoods the contribution of agricultural production to household subsistence has been declining this trend has been reinforced by a decline in public investment stagnant growth and fluctuating prices for agricultural products men have been able to access the better paid non farm jobs while leaving women behind to manage agricultural production the renewed link between production and food security in agricultural policy has however meant allowing men not to have responsibility for household food security while a right to land for women is a positive development it appears also to be leading to an enhancement of work burdens without much change in terms of status or decision making authority

forecasting crude oil price movements with oil sensitive stocks this paper uses monthly data from 1984 m10 to 2012 m8 to show that oil sensitive stock price indices particularly those in the energy sector have strong power in predicting nominal and real crude oil prices at short horizons one month ahead predictions using both in and out of sample tests in particular the forecasts based on oil sensitive stock price indices are able to outperform significantly the no change forecasts for example using the nyse arca amex oil index as a predictor the one month ahead forecasts for nominal crude oil prices reduce the mean squared prediction error by between 22 for the west texas intermediate oil price and 28 for the dubai oil price moreover we find that the directional forecast based the amex oil index is ignificantly better than a 50 50 coin toss the novelty of this analysis is that it proposes a new and valuable predictor that both reflects timely market information and is readily available for forecasting the spot oil price

forecasting exchange rates with commodity prices a global country analysis this paper investigates the predictive properties of import and export prices of commodities on the exchange rates a period from 1993 to 2016 is considered we find that forecasts of the exchange rate adding commodity export and import prices are superior to those neglecting these variables this holds irrespective of whether the countries are net exporters or importers of commodities however the forecasting power was even better in the 1990s and seems to have decreased since that that time nevertheless forecasts can even today be improved considerably by adding commodity prices

measuring market power in bilateral oligopoly the wholesale market for beef econometric methods for assessing the degree of market power typically rely on a maintained hypothesis of price taking behavior on one side of the market or the other in the analysis of bilateral oligopoly however one would like to leave open the question of whether buyers or sellers or both behave competitively while allowing for the possible exercise of market power on either side in this paper we address the problem of measuring market power in bilateral oligopoly this requires that we first distinguish among three candidate equilibrium concepts bilateral price taking seller price taking and buyer price taking choosing among them comes down to a test of nonnested nonlinear simultaneous equation models our application to the u s wholesale market for beef characterized by high degrees of concentration among both sellers beef packers and buyers primarily retail grocery chains reveals seller price taking among the three candidates to be the most consistent with the data in particular the hypothesis of price taking conduct on both sides of the market can be rejected this is a conclusion that would not have been reached had we considered monopoly conduct by sellers as the only alternative to perfect competition

identifying and addressing land governance constraints to support intensification and land market operation evidence from 10 african countries beyond concerns about agricultural productivity growth issues of land governance have attracted global interest as demand for land acquisition by outsiders has increased rapidly but most of the transfers failed to live up to expectations and instead disrupted local livelihoods we use the land governance assessment framework to identify key conceptual issues and identify how land governance in 10 african countries compares to global good practice results point towards weak protection of rights in practice large gaps in female land access and limited outreach and effectiveness of institutions to record rights and adjudicate disputes we note that programs to improve performance along these lines had significant impact in other contexts suggesting that efforts to improve land governance will be warranted and should be closely monitored and evaluated in an effort to identify models suited to african conditions and assess their impact and interaction with other factor markets

exchange rate predictability in a changing world an expanding literature articulates the view that taylor rules are helpful in predicting exchange rates in a changing world however taylor rule parameters may be subject to structural instabilities for example in the aftermath of the global financial crisis this paper forecasts exchange rates using taylor rules with time varying parameters tvp estimated by bayesian methods focusing on the data from the crisis we improve upon the random walk for at least half and for as many as seven out of 10 of the currencies considered results are stronger when we allow the tvp of the taylor rules to differ between countries

effects of horizontal consolidation under bilateral imperfect competition between processors and retailers this article considers bilateral imperfect competition between processors and retailers to estimate the trade off between market power and cost efficiency the model is based on pricing rules from a firm s profit maximization and nests both oligopoly and oligopsony models an empirical analysis for us beef processors and retailers suggests that processors tend to exercise oligopsony market power in procuring cattle but they are unlikely to exercise market power on retailers when retailers and processors are considered as one integrated sector efficiency effects from the increased concentration in the us beef packing industry are slightly larger than market power effects when processors market power is considered separately from retailers market power the difference between cost saving and market power effects becomes greater the cost elasticity estimate 0 99 indicates that a further merger would result in little economies of scale in the future therefore although we find that efficiency effect

noncausality and the commodity currency hypothesis abstract this paper provides new evidence on the role of exchange rates in forecasting commodity prices consistent with previous studies we find that commodity currencies hold out of sample predictive power for commodity prices when using standard linear predictive regressions after we reconsider the evidence using noncausal autoregressions which provide a better fit to the data and are able to accommodate the effects of nonlinearities and omitted variables the predictive power of exchange rates disappears

modelling upstream and downstream market power in bilateral oligopoly abstractthis article develops a general model that estimates market power exertion in a bilateral market relationship for processors and retailers where each may also have market power in their primary input market and output markets respectively monte carlo experiments are used to generate industry data for market structures such as perfect competition monopoly monopsony bilateral imperfect competition with an integrated processor retailer bilateral imperfect competition with separate processor and retailer and bilateral imperfect competition with four adjacent upstream and downstream markets then new empirical industrial organization models are estimated using the data with models that match the market structure under which the data were generated true and with models that reflect alternative market structures alternative the general model is derived using the production function approach without imposing the fixed proportion assumption monte carlo simulation results indicate that the gen

environmental and gender impacts of land tenure regularization in africa pilot evidence from rwanda although increased global demand for land has led to renewed interest in african land tenure few models to address these issues quickly and at the required scale have been identified or evaluated the case of rwanda s nation wide and relatively low cost land tenure regularization program is thus of great interest this paper evaluates the short term impact some 2 5 years after completion of the pilots undertaken to fine tune the approach using a geographic discontinuity design with spatial fixed effects three key findings emerge from the analysis first the program improved land access for legally married women about 76 percent of married couples and prompted better recordation of inheritance rights without gender bias second the analysis finds a very large impact on investment and maintenance of soil conservation measures this effect was particularly pronounced for female headed households suggesting that this group had suffered from high levels of tenure insecurity which the program managed to reduce third land market activity declined allowing rejection of the hypothesis that the program caused a wave of distress sales or widespread landlessness by vulnerable people implications for program design and policy are discussed

country characteristics and the incidence of capital income taxation on wages an empirical assessment this paper examines the incidence of corporate income taxes on wages using data from the us bureau of labor statistics for 13 oecd countries within a wage bargaining framework our econometric analysis shows that a substantial share of the corporate tax burden is shifted from capital to labour however the magnitude of this shift is influenced importantly by country characteristics affecting the process of wage determination such as the degree of capital mobility a country s relative influence over the world price of output and trade unions strength

exchange rate predictability the main goal of this article is to provide an answer to the question does anything forecast exchange rates and if so which variables it is well known that exchange rate fluctuations are very difficult to predict using economic models and that a random walk forecasts exchange rates better than any economic model the meese and rogoff puzzle however the recent literature has identified a series of fundamentals methodologies that claim to have resolved the puzzle this article provides a critical review of the recent literature on exchange rate forecasting and illustrates the new methodologies and fundamentals that have been recently proposed in an up to date thorough empirical analysis overall our analysis of the literature and the data suggests that the answer to the question are exchange rates predictable is it depends on the choice of predictor forecast horizon sample period model and forecast evaluation method predictability is most apparent when one or more of the following hold the predictors are taylor rule or net foreign assets the model is linear and a small number of parameters are estimated the toughest benchmark is the random walk without drift

wages for wives renegotiating gender and production relations in contract farming in the dominican republic abstract this study analyzes the intersection of gender and production relations in small scale contracting in nontraditional agriculture the case of the processing tomato industry in the dominican republic exemplifies patterns found throughout the region building on a critique of unitary household models i analyze the gendered relations mobilizing resources for contract farming as appears common contracting has heightened demand for women s farm labor contracting has simultaneously provided women with openings for contesting the appropriation of their unpaid labor and many women are claiming payment for work in contract farming this case demonstrates the importance of gender issues in informing contract farming debates and policy interventions

measuring market power and cost efficiency effects of industrial concentration in this paper i show how appelbaum s framework for testing price taking behavior in a single industry can be formally extended to consider concentration explicitly in so doing i separate the market power effect of concentration from its cost efficiency effect data from the us beef packing industry are used to illustrate an empirical application of the model the findings support oligopsonistic market power and slaughter cost efficiency in the industry however the cost efficiency effect outweighs the market power effect

connectionist based rules describing the pass through of individual goods prices into trend inflation in the united states this paper demonstrates a mechanism whereby rules can be extracted from a feedforward neural network trained to characterize the inflation pass through problem in american monetary policy defined as the relationship between changes in the growth rate s of individual commodities and the economy wide rate of growth of consumer prices monthly price data are encoded and used to train a group of candidate connectionist architectures one candidate is selected for rule extraction using a custom decompositional extraction algorithm that generates rules in human readable and machine executable form rule and network accuracy are compared and comments are made on the relationships expressed within the discovered rules the types of discovered relationships could be used to guide monetary policy decisions

forecasting bordeaux wine prices using state space methods generic bordeaux red wine basic claret can be regarded as being similar to an agricultural commodity production volumes are substantial they are traded at high frequency and the quality of the

let s talk about the money spousal communication expenditures and farm production a burgeoning body of literature highlights asymmetric information among household members however little is known about the source of the asymmetry and its effect on efficiency using a unique survey of ghanaian households we examine the accuracy of spousal cross reports and the effect of discrepancies on farm production we find that information problems pertain to scale the quantity of resources and scope the distribution of resources as well as allocation decisions on the margin engel curves moreover we find that information asymmetries lead to inefficiency in production and the effect is equivalent to about 15 of the variation across households

collective action within the household insights from natural resource management summary households face many collective action situations with members working together to produce livelihoods and allocate goods but neither unitary nor bargaining models of the household provide frameworks to analyze the conditions under which households work collectively and when they fail to do so drawing on the institutional analysis and development framework based in the natural resource management literature this paper explores the factors that encourage and inhibit collective action and provides insights into how to understand collective action problems within the household as dynamic multi actor situations with outcomes that can be evaluated by multiple criteria not just efficiency

forecasting oil price realized volatility using information channels from other asset classes motivated from ross 1989 who maintains that asset volatilities are synonymous to the information flow we claim that cross market volatility transmission effects are synonymous to cross market information flows or information channels from one market to another based on this assertion we assess whether cross market volatility flows contain important information that can improve the accuracy of oil price realized volatility forecasting we concentrate on realized volatilities derived from the intra day prices of the brent crude oil and four different asset classes stocks forex commodities and macro which represent the different information channels by which oil price volatility is impacted from we employ a har framework and estimate forecasts for 1 day to 66 days ahead our findings provide strong evidence that the use of the different information channels enhances the predictive accuracy of oil price realized volatility at all forecasting horizons numerous forecasting evaluation tests and alternative model specifications confirm the robustness of our results

is risk fully pooled within the household evidence from ghana using detailed household survey data from ghana this paper examines whether the transitory incomes of individual household members affect household expenditure patterns divided into six sections the themes include risk sharing networks household survey data from ghana theoretical framework of risk sharing within households estimating transitory income and effects on household budget shares the conclusion that transitory incomes earned by different members of the household have different effects on household expenditure patterns this implies that household members do not engage in full risk pooling with each other moreover it is not always the case that all women or all men display similar preferences or risk pooling behavior this suggests complex features within the household risk sharing structure which is more complex than might be hypothesized by a simplistic analysis framed along gender lines

the exchange rate exposure puzzle the long and the short of it the exchange rate exposure puzzle has remained robust to empirical scrutiny however evidence suggests the puzzle abates when longer horizons are considered this paper applies inference that is appropriate in a long horizon setting and finds this evidence is illusory

what drives commodity prices this paper examines common forces driving the prices of 51 highly tradable commodities we demonstrate that highly persistent movements of these prices are mostly due to the first common component which is closely related to the us nominal exchange rate in particular our simple factor based model outperforms the random walk model in out of sample forecast for the us exchange rate the second common factor and de factored idiosyncratic components are consistent with stationarity implying short lived deviations from the equilibrium price dynamics in concert these results provide an intriguing resolution to the apparent inconsistency arising from stable markets with nonstationary prices

commodity currencies and causality some high frequency evidence abstract i investigate the link between economic fundamentals and exchange rate adjustment to commodity price fluctuations i overcome the traditional issue of simultaneity by exploiting the september 14 2019 drone attack on two saudi arabian refineries as a natural experiment this unanticipated event caused the largest 1 day global crude oil price shock in over a decade using high frequency exchange rate data for 30 countries i link the cross section of exchange rate movements around the event to country specific fundamentals and currency risk factors crude export and import intensities were associated with appreciation depreciation additionally countries with higher policy interest rates and weaker financial positions experienced greater currency depreciation while safe haven currencies appreciated consistent with risk off sentiment triggering carry trades to unwind estimated pre event crude oil and vix betas can also explain the cross section of exchange rate adjustment and these currency risk factors are tightly associated with oil related and financial fundamentals respectively

the effects of surprise and anticipated technology changes on international relative prices and trade abstract this paper argues that it is important to distinguish surprise and anticipated components of total factor productivity tfp when we study the international transmission of tfp shocks we document that surprise and anticipated shocks to us tfp induce distinct dynamics for international relative prices the real exchange rate and the terms of trade and international trade real exports real imports and the trade balance our empirical findings can reconcile some conflicting empirical results in the literature and hence lead to a better understanding of the international transmission of tfp shocks in addition we evaluate a standard international macroeconomic model and discuss the mechanisms that may help to replicate our empirical findings

uncertainty and deviations from uncovered interest rate parity abstract it is well known that uncovered interest rate parity does not hold empirically especially at short horizons but is it really so we conjecture that uncovered interest rate parity is more likely to hold in low uncertainty environments relative to high uncertainty ones since arbitrage opportunity gains become more uncertain in a highly unpredictable environment thus blurring the relationship between exchange rates and interest rate differentials in this paper we first provide a new exchange rate uncertainty index that measures how unpredictable exchange rates are relative to their historical past then we use the new measure of uncertainty to provide empirical evidence that uncovered interest rate parity does hold in five industrialized countries vis a vis the us dollar at times when uncertainty is not exceptionally high and breaks down during periods of high uncertainty

was it real the exchange rate interest differential relation over the modern floating rate period in this paper we explore the relationship between real exchange rates and real interest rate differentials in the united states germany japan and the united kingdom contrary to theories based on the joint hypothesis that domestic prices are sticky and monetary disturbances are predominant we find little evidence of a stable relationship between real interest rates and real exchange rates we consider both in sample and out of sample tests one hypothesis that is consistent with our findings is that real disturbances such as productivity shocks may be a major source of exchange rate volatility this paper investigates the empirical relationship between major currency real exchange rates and real interest rates over the modern post march 1973 flexible rate experience the exchange rates examined here include the dollar mark dollar yen and dollar pound rates our two major findings are as follows first the data do not indicate a strong correspondence between real interest rate differentials short term or long term and real exchange rates this finding appears to conflict with the predictions of most monetary and portfolio balance models of exchange rate determination though the conflict can be substantially reconciled if aggregate disturbances are primarily real in nature i e changes in productivity tastes etc it is true that in many cases the sign of the estimated exchange rate interest rate differential relationship is consistent with the possible predominance of financial market disturbances but the relationship is not stable enough to be statistically significant second although one does find some evidence of a unit root in both real exchange rates and long term but not shortterm real interest differentials these two series do not appear to be linearly cointegrated hence the nonstationarity or near nonstationarity in the two series cannot be attributed to the same factor in section i we briefly describe a class of small scale monetary models of exchange rate determination the importance of this class of models for empirical work derives from its strong predictions about how the exchange rate will move

demand information and spot price information supply chains trading in spot markets abstract this paper investigates the effect of information updating on the members of a two stage supply chain in the presence of spot market the supplier decides the contract price new information becomes available as time progresses the manufacturer updates his belief on demand and or spot price and subsequently decides the contract quantity the demand and spot price are correlated thus the new demand information also updates the belief on the spot price and vice versa we model the problem with an information updating stackelberg game and derive unique equilibrium strategies previous studies have considered only the demand information and concluded that improved demand information always benefits the supplier by contrast we demonstrate that improved demand information benefits both the supplier and manufacturer if the correlation coefficient between the two uncertainties has a small positive value and benefits the manufacturer but hurts the supplier otherwise moreover superior spot price information benefits only the manufacturer and always hurts the supplier surprisingly superior information fails to improve the performance of the supply chain and only changes the allocation of the profits between the supplier and manufacturer our findings likewise provide insights into when the supplier intends to use the contract channel and which type of information updating facility or expertise to invest in if a choice must be made

the empirical merit of structural explanations of commodity price volatility review and perspectives this paper presents both the history of and state of the art in empirical modeling approaches to the world commodity price volatility the analysis builds on the storage model and key milestones in its development specifically it is intended to offer a reader unfamiliar with the relevant literature an insight into the modeling issues at stake from both a historical and speculative viewpoint the review considers primarily the empirical techniques designed to assess the merits of the storage theory it does not address purely statistical approaches that do not rely on storage theory and that have been studied in depth in other streams of the commodity price literature the paper concludes with some suggestions for future research to try to resolve some of the existing empirical flaws and hopefully to increase the explanatory power of the storage model

global spillover effects of us uncertainty abstract spillover effects of us uncertainty shocks are studied in a panel var of fifteen emerging market economies emes a us uncertainty shock negatively affects eme stock prices and exchange rates raises eme country spreads and decreases capital inflows into them it decreases eme output and consumer prices while increasing net exports negative effects on output and asset prices are weaker but effects on external balance stronger for latin american emes we attribute such heterogeneity to differential eme monetary policy response to us uncertainty shocks analysis of central bank minutes shows latin american emes pay less attention to smoothing capital flows

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates revisiting theory and evidence abstract this paper reviews existing theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates we start with theoretical transmission channels which point to bi directional causality empirical research is classified and shows that the evidence varies substantially depending on sample country choice and empirical method yet there are some common patterns i strong links between exchange rates and oil prices are frequently observed over the long run and ii either exchange rates or oil prices are a potentially useful predictor of the other variable in the short run but the effects are strongly time varying we also identify some important avenues for future research

real exchange rates and primary commodity prices abstract in this paper we show that there is substantial comovement between prices of primary commodities such as oil aluminum maize or copper and real exchange rates between developed economies such as germany japan and the united kingdom against the us dollar we therefore explicitly consider the production of commodities in a two country model of trade with productivity shocks and shocks to the supply of commodities we calibrate the model so as to reproduce among other things the volatility and persistence of primary commodity prices and show that it delivers equilibrium real exchange rates that are as volatile and persistent as they are in the data the model rationalizes an empirical strategy to identify the fraction of the variance in real exchange rates that can be accounted for by the underlying shocks even if those shocks are not observable we use this strategy to argue that shocks that move primary commodity prices account for a large fraction of the volatility of real exchange rates in the data our analysis implies that existing models used to analyze real exchange rates between large economies that mostly focus on trade between differentiated final goods could benefit in terms of matching the behavior of real exchange rates by also considering trade in primary commodities

commodity currencies and the real exchange rate abstract this paper examines whether the real exchange rates of commodity exporting countries and the real prices of their commodity exports move together over time using international monetary fund imf data on the world prices of 44 commodities and national commodity export shares we construct new monthly indices of national commodity export prices for 58 commodity exporting countries over 1980 2002 evidence of a long run relationship between national real exchange rate and real commodity prices is found for about one third of the commodity exporting countries the long run real exchange rate of these commodity currencies is not constant as would be implied by purchasing power parity based models but is time varying being dependent on movements in the real price of commodity exports

determinants of nonfarm earnings of farm based husbands and wives in northern ghana the nonfarm work participation decisions of married men and women in rural northern ghana were jointly and separately estimated for married couples through a bivariate probit using recent survey data selectivity bias was corrected for in estimating wage offer and labor supply equations using heckman s procedure education experience infrastructure distance to the capital and population density as well as interactions between education and infrastructure and between education and distance to the city were found to be significantly related to the probability of nonfarm labor market participation wages and the amount of nonfarm labor performed with significant differences by gender

commodity price carry trade and the volatility and liquidity of asian currencies this study examines how the volatility and liquidity of 10 asian exchange rates against the us dollar change with volatilities in commodity price and carry trade over the period of january 2000 to june 2010 we find that uncertainties in commodity markets and carry trades are significantly correlated with the volatilities and the bid ask spreads of most asian currencies the correlation with carry trade is generally stronger and has been rising over the sample period while high volatilities in carry trade are associated with high volatilities in many asian currencies high volatilities in commodity price do not coincide with excessive volatilities in asian currencies this suggests that investors and policymakers should be more concerned with the volatility in carry trade

the roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in africa this article reviews the past and potential future roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in sub saharan africa ssa as responses to population growth in the process of land use intensification and livelihood transformation the farm size distribution and the existence of an inverse relationship ir between farm size and land productivity in ssa and the implications of this relationship for efficiency and equity are investigated more secure property rights and removal of restrictions on land markets have the potential to create both efficiency and equity benefits but there are high risks of elite capture of large land areas with inefficient and inequitable outcomes this situation is the case not only in land abundant areas but also in urban and peri urban areas where increasingly larger proportions of people will make their living increasing population pressure in densely populated rural areas contributes to more rapid rural urban migration and creating alternative livelihood opportunities for the migrating youth population is essential to achieving economic development with social stability

is there a homogeneous causality pattern between oil prices and currencies of oil importers and exporters although the link between oil prices and dollar exchange rates has been frequently analyzed a clear distinction between prices and nominal exchange rate dynamics and a clarification of the issue of causality has not been provided in addition previous studies have mostly neglected nonlinearities which for example may stem from exogenous oil price shocks using monthly data for various oil exporting and oil importing countries this study contributes to the clarification of those issues we discriminate between long run and time varying short run dynamics using a markov switching vector error correction model in terms of causality the results differ between the economies under observation but suggest that the most important causality runs from exchange rates to oil prices with a depreciation of the dollar triggering an increase in oil prices on the other hand changes in nominal oil prices are responsible for ambiguous real exchange rate effects mostly through the price differential and partly also through a direct influence on the nominal exchange rate overall the fact that the adjustment pattern frequently differs between regimes underlines the fact that the relationships are subject to changes over time suggesting that nonlinearities are an important issue when analyzing oil prices and exchange rates

imperfect competition in multiproduct food industries with application to pear processing agricultural product markets often involve relatively few firms processing a farm product into multiple processed products this market structure prompts concern that processing firms may exercise both oligopsony and oligopoly power the present paper develops and applies a methodology to test simultaneously for market power in both the raw input market and multiple processed output markets application of the methodology to california pear processing indicates the industry has exerted power in both its farm input market and the markets for canned pears and fruit cocktail

which fundamentals drive exchange rates a cross sectional perspective standard present value models suggest that exchange rates are driven by expected future fundamentals implying that exchange rates contain information about future fundamentals we test this key empirical prediction of present value models in a sample of 35 currency pairs ranging from 1900 to 2009 employing a variety of tests we find that exchange rates have strong and significant predictive power for nominal fundamentals inflation money balances nominal gdp whereas predictability of real fundamentals and risk premia is much weaker and largely confined to the post bretton woods era overall we uncover ample evidence that future macro fundamentals drive current exchange rates

dynamic spillover between commodities and commodity currencies during united states q e abstract this paper comprehensively discusses the dynamic relationship between commodities and commodity currencies particularly during the u s quantitative easing qes by integrating the generalized spillover index into a fractionally integrated var fivar model our empirical analyses reach the following conclusions first the static return and volatility spillovers analyses show that the food is the only net receiver among all the commodity price indices second the dynamic total return and volatility spillover accelerated growth in term of the index by roughly between 15 and 25 for four regional groups during the initiation of the qe1 and subsequently remained across the first two rounds of the u s qe nevertheless both the total return and volatility spillover declined in the midst of the qe3 as the u s federal reserve signaled the qe tapering due to the anticipated u s economic recovery third the energy and metals components were the largest net transmitters of return and volatility spillovers during the u s qes a possible interpretation is that demand for energy and metals increase associated with an increase in economic activity that is triggered by the u s qes last almost all the sample commodity currencies acted as net receivers of return and volatility spillovers during the u s qes supporting the pass through of commodities to commodity currencies

oil currencies in the face of oil shocks what can be learned from time varying specifications abstractwhile the oil currency property is clearly established from a theoretical viewpoint its existence is less clear cut in the empirical literature we investigate the reasons for this apparent puzzle by studying the time varying nature of the relationship between real effective exchange rates of five oil exporters and the real price of oil in the aftermath of the oil price shocks of the last two decades accordingly we rely on a time varying parameter var specification which allows the responses of real exchange rates to different oil price shocks to evolve over time we find that the reason of the mixed results obtained in the empirical literature is that oil currencies follow different hybrid models in the sense that oil countries real exchange rates may be driven by one or several sources of oil price shocks that furthermore can vary over time in addition to structural changes affecting oil countries structural changes arising from the oil market itself through the various time varying sour

can oil prices forecast exchange rates an empirical analysis of the relationship between commodity prices and exchange rates we show the existence of a very short term relationship at the daily frequency between changes in the price of a country s major commodity export and changes in its nominal exchange rate the relationship appears to be robust and to hold when we use contemporaneous realized commodity price changes in our regression however when we use lagged commodity price changes the predictive ability is ephemeral mostly appearing after instabilities have been appropriately taken into account

the gender asset gap land in latin america summary the gender asset gap in latin america with respect to ownership of land is significant in few countries do women constitute even one quarter of the landowners gender inequality in land ownership is related to male preference in inheritance male privilege in marriage male bias in community and state programs of land distribution as well as gender bias in the land market with women less likely than men to be successful buyers but there are also important di erences by gender in how land is acquired inheritance is the primary means by which most women become landowners men are much more likely than women to acquire land through its distribution by communities or the state and via the market factors contributing toward a trend toward greater gender equity in land inheritance and in recent state programs are highlighted 2003 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

lignocellulosic ethanol production from woody biomass the impact of facility siting on competitiveness abstract just as temperate region pulp and paper companies need to compete with brazilian eucalyptus pulp producers lignocellulosic biofuel producers in north america and europe in the absence of protectionist trade policies will need to be competitive with tropical and sub tropical biofuel producers this work sought to determine the impact of lignocellulosic ethanol biorefinery siting on economic performance and minimum ethanol selling price mesp for both east and west coast north american fuel markets facility sites included the pine dominated pacific northwest interior the mixed deciduous forest of ontario and new york and the brazilian state of espirito santo feedstock scenarios included both plantation poplar willow and eucalyptus respectively and managed forest harvest site specific variables in the techno economic model included delivered feedstock cost ethanol delivery cost cost of capital construction cost labour cost electricity revenues and co product credits and taxes insurance and permits despite the long shipping distance from brazil to north american east and west coast markets the mesp for brazilian produced eucalyptus lignocellulosic ethanol modelled at 0 74 l 1 was notably lower than that of all north american produced cases at 0 83 1 02 l 1

rare disasters and exchange rates we propose a new model of exchange rates which yields a theory of the forward premium puzzle our explanation combines two ingredients the possibility of rare economic disasters and an asset view of the exchange rate our model is frictionless has complete markets and works for an arbitrary number of countries in the model rare worldwide disasters can occur and affect each country s productivity each country s exposure to disaster risk varies over time according to a mean reverting process ri sky countries command high risk premia they feature a depreciated exchange rate and a high interest rate as their risk premium mean reverts their exchange rate appreciates therefore currencies of high interest rate countries appreciate on average to make the notion of disaster risk more implementable we show how options prices might in principle uncover latent disaster risk and help forecast exchange rate movements we then extend the framework to incorporate two factors a disaster risk factor and a business cycle factor we calibrate the model and obtain quantitatively realistic values for the volatility of the exchange rate the forward premium puzzle regression coefficients and near random walk exchange rate dynamics finally we solve a model of stock markets across countries which yields a series of predictions about the joint behavior of exchange rates bonds options and stocks across countries the evidence from the options market appears to be supportive of the model jel e43 e44 f31 g12 g15

causal flows between oil and forex markets using high frequency data asymmetries from good and bad volatility abstract this paper investigates the causal linkages in volatility between crude oil prices and six major bilateral exchange rates against the u s dollar in the time frequency space using high frequency intraday data special attention is paid to the potential asymmetries in the causal effects between oil and forex markets the wavelet based granger causality method proposed by olayeni 2016 is applied to quantify the causal relations in the time and frequency domains simultaneously moreover the realized semivariance approach of barndoff nielsen et al 2010 is used to account for possible asymmetries in the transmission of volatility shocks the empirical results show that the significant causal links between oil prices and exchange rates are mainly concentrated in the long run and during periods of increased economic and financial uncertainty such as the global financial crisis and the subsequent european sovereign debt crisis further the causal effects from currency markets to the crude oil market are stronger than in the opposite direction consistent with the forward looking nature of exchange rates the role of the u s dollar as the key invoicing currency for global oil trading and the expanding financialization of the oil market since the mid 2000s in addition significant asymmetries coming from good and bad volatility are found at longer horizons specifically bad volatility seems to dominate good volatility in terms of the importance of transmission of volatility shocks

primary commodity prices co movements common factors and fundamentals the behavior of commodities is critical for developing and developed countries alike this paper contributes to the empirical evidence on the co movement and determinants of commodity prices using nonstationary panel methods we document a statistically significant degree of co movement due to a common factor within a factor augmented var approach real interest rate and uncertainty as postulated by a simple asset pricing model are both found to be negatively related to this common factor this evidence is robust to the inclusion of demand and supply shocks which both positively impact on the co movement of commodity prices

effects of mineral commodity price shocks on monetary policy in developed countries this article investigates effects of changes in mineral commodity prices on monetary policy using macroeconomic data from three mineral producing countries australia canada and new zealand and two non mineral resource countries usa and uk i estimate the impulse response functions of the policy interest rates and the core consumer price index cpi inflation rates to mineral commodity price shocks i find that the central banks in both groups of the examined countries significantly respond to mineral commodity price shocks in responses to an unexpected 10 increase in mineral commodity prices the central banks are estimated to increase their policy interest rates by approximately 0 8 percentage points moreover the central banks seem to take anticipatory policy reactions to control core cpi variations triggered by these shocks thus mineral commodity prices would act as important determinants of the monetary policies in both groups of the examined countries these findings would be useful for an

gender differentials in farm productivity implications for household efficiency and agricultural policy abstract within many african households agricultural production is simultaneously carried out on many plots controlled by different members of the household detailed plot level agronomic data from burkina faso provides striking evidence of substantial inefficiencies in the allocation of factors of production across the plots controlled by different members of the household production function estimates imply that the value of household output could be increased by 10 15 by reallocating currently used factors of production across plots this finding contradicts standard models of agricultural households a richer model of behaviour which recognizes that the individuals who comprise a household compete as well as co operate has important implications for the structure of agricultural production and for the design of agricultural policy

can exchange rates forecast commodity prices we show that commodity currency exchange rates have surprisingly robust power in predicting global commodity prices both in sample and out of sample and against a variety of alternative benchmarks this result is of particular interest to policy makers given the lack of deep forward markets in many individual commodities and broad aggregate commodity indices in particular we also explore the reverse relationship commodity prices forecasting exchange rates but find it to be notably less robust we offer a theoretical resolution based on the fact that exchange rates are strongly forward looking whereas commodity price fluctuations are typically more sensitive to short term demand imbalances

out of sample testing price discovery in commodity markets the case of soybeans price discovery a central function of futures markets has been usually tested in sample by studying the common stochastic trend between spot and futures prices instead to evaluate futures as anticipatory prices we develop a forecast approach to out of sample test price discovery in a multivariate framework we apply it to the soybeans market results indicate futures prices as the best available predictors of future spot prices although this finding holds only on average and for certain periods other models show forecasting gains

exchange rate economics is always and everywhere controversial abstractthis article reviews the major developments in the recent literature on exchange rate economics it is argued that the link between the exchange rate and economic fundamentals is breaking new ground evidence indicates that alternative analytical frameworks such as the new open economy macroeconomics and exchange rate arrangements such as the euro have their theoretical and analytical elegance but are proving empirically very difficult to implement the role of methodological advances and alternative fundamental instruments such as world commodity prices is also highlighted

joint titling in rural peru impact on women s participation in household decision making summary peru has implemented joint property rights between spouses and cohabitants on 57 of 1 5 million formalized agricultural plots bargaining theory indicates such redistribution of assets should empower women this project measures influence on decision making in 1 280 rural households interviewing man and woman separately a historical coincidence during the land reform of the 1960 70s made only some communities eligible for plot titling the process was exogenous and independent of both household and community characteristics the significantly positive impact on female empowerment in simple mean comparison and econometric models including pre titling historic variables is hence unbiased

does exchange rate management affect the causality between exchange rates and oil prices evidence from oil exporting countries abstract the bi directional causality between exchange rates and oil prices of oil exporting countries has been widely investigated since the oil crisis in the 1970s the classical theoretical framework assumes that countries adopt free floating exchange rate arrangements and empirical studies seldom consider exchange rate restrictions when investigating oil exporters that always manage exchange rates to address these limitations this study designs a comparative analysis for three groups of oil exporting economies that adopt different foreign exchange rate policies the analysis aims to examine whether and how intervention behavior may distort the causal relationship between exchange rates and oil prices we first show the non linear causality relationships for countries with free floating exchange rate arrangements in both long and short terms then we establish how the managed floating policy can eliminate the impact of oil prices on exchange rates in bull markets but fail to prevent exchange rate depreciation in bear markets in bear markets a negative non linear feedback from exchange rates to oil prices prevails in these countries however contrary to common wisdom the strict soft pegged exchange rate arrangement cannot remove all the linkages between exchange rates and oil prices a small but significant response of exchange rates toward oil prices is detected for kuwait and saudi arabia a similar effect for kazakhstan is only found in bear markets in addition this study re investigates the relationship between exchange rate and the domestic currency price of oil the conclusions are similar except that the relationship is weakened in free floating countries but strengthened in managed floating countries during the bear market periods

estimating the degree of market power in the beef packing industry a technique for assessing the degree of monopoly power developed by appelbaum 1979 1982 is extended here to permit measurement of monopsony power as well data from the u s beef packing industry are examined the results reveal small but statistically significant monopoly monopsony price distortions in slaughter cattle and wholesale beef markets but in spite of a recent trend toward heightened concentration in the industry give no indication that performance has become appreciably less competitive of late this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

commodity prices convenience yields and inflation abstract this paper provides evidence that the two leading principal components in a panel of 23 commodity convenience yields have statistically and quantitatively important predictive power for inflation even after controlling for unemployment gap and oil prices the results hold up in out of sample forecasts across forecast horizons and across g7 countries the convenience yields also explain commodity prices and can be seen as informational variables about future economic conditions as conveyed by the futures markets a bootstrap procedure for conducting inference when the principal components are used as regressors is also proposed

descent rules and strategic transfers evidence from matrilineal groups in ghana abstract traditional descent systems can roughly be divided into patrilineal and matrilineal in the latter a man s heir is not his own child but rather his sister s son the paper examines the implications of this social norm for the pattern of inter vivos transfers using household level data from rural ghana where the largest ethnic group is traditionally matrilineal in particular it tests the predictions of a model of strategic behavior according to which children should respond to the threat of disinheritance by increasing transfers to their parents during lifetime to induce a donation of land before the default matrilineal inheritance is enforced i find that the credibility of customary norms enforcement as proxied by the presence of a nephew in the father s household significantly increases the probability of receiving transfers from children for akans but not for the other groups the effect is specific to nephews and not to other co resident boys this pattern of behavior can affect asset accumulation decisions across generations

the mystery of capital formation in sub saharan africa women property rights and customary law summary economists such as hernando de soto have argued that clearly defined property rights are essential to capital formation and ultimately to economic growth and poverty alleviation this article traces two impediments to the clear definition of property rights in the african context customary law and the status of women both of these issues interfere with the attempt of african countries to rearticulate property law with the goal of capital formation constructive attempts to define property rights must address the problem of enforcement in under resourced environments where changes may not be welcomed

volatility risk premia and future commodity returns abstract this paper extends the empirical literature on volatility risk premium vrp and future returns by analyzing the predictive ability of commodity currency vrp and commodity vrp the empirical evidence throughout this paper provides support for a positive relationship of commodity currencies vrp and future commodity returns but only for the period after the 2008 global financial crisis this predictability survives the inclusion of control variables like equity vrp and past currency returns furthermore gold vrp also has the ability to predict future commodity returns however this predictability is restricted to precious metals when control variables are considered

competitive storage and commodity price dynamics by buying cheap and selling dear risk neutral commodity speculators can smooth commodity prices and induce serial dependence in price even when none would exist under a simple process of supply and demand commodity prices are variable and strongly positively correlated from one year to the next the variability is often explained by supply factors and the autocorrelation by the activities of speculators we show that this explanation is not consistent with the evidence speculation can substantially increase autocorrelation for prices that are weakly autocorrelated in its absence but not to the high levels that are observed in the data

dual measures of monopoly and monopsony power an application to regulated electric utilities the inefficiency from monopoly pricing monopsony pricing and other institutional factors should be simultaneously estimated to avoid misspecification estimation of a behavioral profit function where input and output shadow prices may diverge from their market values allows unbiased simultaneous estimation of inefficiencies if its normalized form is employed in an application to electric utilities consuming western coal the authors cannot reject the hypothesis that utilities act as price takers in output markets and find weak and statistically insignificant evidence of fuel adjustment clause bias strong evidence is found of monopsony behavior in the market for western coal and its transportation copyright 1989 by mit press