Export Earnings Instability of ACP Countries: A Time-Series Analysis

This paper examines the level of export earnings instabilities of ACP countries (African, Caribbean and pacific states signatories of the Lome Convention); their evolution through time and across countries. At present, this group comprises of seventy developing countries. This deliberate choice of the sample was done in order to examine whether fluctuations in export earnings of these countries have relatively decreased as envisaged by the STABEX system, of the lome Convention introduced in 1975 by the European Economic Community. The country coverage of previous studies on export earnings instabilities was generally limited and most of the ACP countries over the periods 1970-1979, 1980-1990 and 1970-1990. The results of the study indicate that instability indices very across countries. Moreover, a comparison of the indices for 1970-1979 and 980-1990 reveals that for more than half of the countries in the sample(21) , there was a reduction on the level of export instability between the two periods whereas for fifteen countries the reverse was true. It was only for three countries that instability indicates remained the same between 1970s and 1980s.