IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v12y2003i3p303-342.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Market Liberalisation Jeopardise Export Quality? Cameroonian Cocoa, 1988--2000

Author

Listed:
  • Eric F. Tollens
  • Christopher L. Gilbert

Abstract

A frequently encountered argument against the liberalisation of markets for tropical crop commodities is that this may jeopardise export quality. We look at this argument in the specific case of Cameroonian cocoa export, where it is widely supposed that liberalisation has resulted in a decline in quality. That claim is not supported by examination of the unit value of cocoa imports into the European Union, which demonstrates constant relativities over time in the unit value of cocoa imports from major West African producers. We argue that, in a liberalised environment, export quality is determined by market participants and that increased competition from cocoa buyers has resulted in a transfer of some processing functions from farmers to intermediaries. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric F. Tollens & Christopher L. Gilbert, 2003. "Does Market Liberalisation Jeopardise Export Quality? Cameroonian Cocoa, 1988--2000," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 12(3), pages 303-342, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:12:y:2003:i:3:p:303-342
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Delpeuch, Claire & Vandeplas, Anneleen, 2013. "Revisiting the “Cotton Problem”—A Comparative Analysis of Cotton Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 209-221.
    2. Mujawamariya, Gaudiose & Burger, Kees & D’Haese, Marijke, 2012. "Quality of Gum Arabic in Senegal: Linking the Laboratory Research to the Field Assessment," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 51(4), pages 1-27, November.
    3. Canh Phuc Nguyen & Thanh Dinh Su, 2021. "Export quality dynamics: Multidimensional evidence of financial development," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(8), pages 2319-2343, August.
    4. Christopher L. Gilbert, 2024. "Cocoa: Origin Differentials and the Living Income Differential," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(4), pages 777-802, August.
    5. Yves Jégourel, 2016. "A chequered African history of commodity markets. Part II: cocoa," Research papers & Policy papers on Commodities & Energy 1604, Policy Center for the New South.
    6. Yves Jégourel, 2016. "A chequered African history of commodity markets. Part II: cocoa," Policy briefs on Commodities & Energy 1604, Policy Center for the New South.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:12:y:2003:i:3:p:303-342. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.