IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/5928.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reducing distortions in international commodity markets : an agenda for multilateral cooperation

Author

Listed:
  • Hoekman, Bernard
  • Martin, Will

Abstract

Global commodity markets are affected by a variety of government policies that may expand or lower overall supply and as a result affect world prices for the specific products concerned. Market failures and market structures (market power along the value chain) also affect supply. This paper briefly reviews a number of factors that may distort international commodity markets with a view to identifying elements of an agenda for multilateral cooperation to reduce such distortions. Much of the policy agenda that arises is domestic and requires action by national governments. But numerous policies -- or absence of policy -- generate international spillovers that call for the negotiation of international policy disciplines. Independent of whether distortions are local or international in scope, the complexity of prevailing market structures and their impacts on efficiency call for much greater monitoring and analysis by the international community.

Suggested Citation

  • Hoekman, Bernard & Martin, Will, 2012. "Reducing distortions in international commodity markets : an agenda for multilateral cooperation," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5928, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5928
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/01/03/000158349_20120103113143/Rendered/PDF/WPS5928.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Saggi, Kamal, 2004. "International Cooperation on Domestic Policies: Lessons from the WTO Competition Policy Debate," CEPR Discussion Papers 4693, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Will Martin & Kym Anderson, 2012. "Export Restrictions and Price Insulation During Commodity Price Booms," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 94(2), pages 422-427.
    3. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will, 2010. "Promoting Global Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction," Conference papers 331944, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    4. Williams,Jeffrey C. & Wright,Brian D., 2005. "Storage and Commodity Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521023399, October.
    5. repec:bla:ecorec:v:73:y:1997:i:221:p:146-58 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Connor, John M., 1997. "Archer Daniels Midland: Price Fixer To The World," Staff Papers 28653, Purdue University, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    7. John M. Connor, 2003. "The Changing Structure Of Global Food Markets: Dimensions, Effects, And Policy Implications," Working Papers 03-02, Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    8. Christophe Gouel & Sébastien Jean, 2015. "Optimal Food Price Stabilization in a Small Open Developing Country," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(1), pages 72-101.
    9. Datt, Mohini & Hoekman, Bernard & Malouche, Mariem, 2011. "Taking Stock of Trade Protectionism Since 2008," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 72, pages 1-9, December.
    10. Hoekman, Bernanrd & Ng, Francis & Olarreaga, Marcelo, 2003. "Reducing agrcultural tariffs versus domestic support : what's more important for developing countries?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2918, The World Bank.
    11. Bolotova, Yuliya & Connor, John M. & Miller, Douglas J., 2008. "The impact of collusion on price behavior: Empirical results from two recent cases," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1290-1307, November.
    12. Collier Paul & Venables Anthony J., 2010. "International Rules for Trade in Natural Resources," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-19, January.
    13. John Connor & C. Gustav Helmers, 2006. "Statistics On Modern Private International Cartels, 1990-2005," Working Papers 06-11, Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    14. Delpeuch, Claire & Leblois, Antoine, 2014. "The Elusive Quest for Supply Response to Cash-Crop Market Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Cotton," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 521-537.
    15. Tarr, David G., 2010. "Export restraints on russian natural gas and raw timber : what are the economic impacts ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5195, The World Bank.
    16. Yuliya Bolotova & John M. Connor & Douglas J. Miller, 2007. "Factors influencing the magnitude of cartel overcharges: An empirical analysis of food-industry cartels," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 17-33.
    17. Anderson,Kym (ed.), 2010. "The Political Economy of Agricultural Price Distortions," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521763233, October.
    18. Chad P. Bown, 2011. "The Great Recession and Import Protection : The Role of Temporary Trade Barriers," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 16359.
    19. Richard J. Sexton & Ian Sheldon & Steve McCorriston & Humei Wang, 2007. "Agricultural trade liberalization and economic development: the role of downstream market power," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 36(2), pages 253-270, March.
    20. Bernard Hoekman & Joel P. Trachtman, 2015. "Canada – wheat: Discrimination, non-commercial considerations, and the right to regulate through state trading enterprises," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Trade Law, Domestic Regulation and Development, chapter 6, pages 167-188, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    21. McCorriston, Steve & MacLaren, Donald, 2005. "Trade and Welfare Effects of State Trading Enterprises," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24523, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    22. Will Martin & Julian M. Alston, 1997. "Producer Surplus without Apology? Evaluating Investments in RD," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 73(221), pages 146-158, June.
    23. Kym Anderson & Will Martin, 2009. "Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Asia," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2611.
    24. Kyle Bagwell & Robert W. Staiger, 2011. "What Do Trade Negotiators Negotiate About? Empirical Evidence from the World Trade Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1238-1273, June.
    25. Hoekman, Bernard M. & Kostecki, Michel M., 2009. "The Political Economy of the World Trading System," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199553778.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Gary Hufbauer & Cathleen Cimino, 2013. "What Future for the WTO?," The International Trade Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(5), pages 394-410, December.
    2. Bernard Hoekman & Will Martin, 2012. "Reducing Distortions in International Commodity Markets," World Bank Publications - Reports 10041, The World Bank Group.
    3. Bernard Hoekman, 2014. "Supply Chains, Mega-Regionals and Multilateralism: A Road Map for the WTO," RSCAS Working Papers 2014/27, European University Institute.
    4. Hoekman, Bernard & Martin, Will, 2012. "Reducing Distortions in International Commodity Markets World commodity markets—and particularly the markets for agricultural commodities—remain highly distorted despite the wave of liberalization tha," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 82, pages 1-5, May.
    5. Atanu Ghoshray & Sushil Mohan, 2021. "Coffee price dynamics: an analysis of the retail-international price margin [Commodity dependence and development: suggestions to tackle the commodities problem]," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 48(4), pages 983-1006.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christophe Gouel, 2014. "Food Price Volatility and Domestic Stabilization Policies in Developing Countries," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 261-306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Hoekman, Bernard & Martin, Will, 2012. "Reducing Distortions in International Commodity Markets World commodity markets—and particularly the markets for agricultural commodities—remain highly distorted despite the wave of liberalization tha," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 82, pages 1-5, May.
    3. Kym Anderson & Signe Nelgen, 2012. "Agricultural trade distortions during the global financial crisis," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 28(2), pages 235-260, SUMMER.
    4. Bernard Hoekman & Will Martin, 2012. "Reducing Distortions in International Commodity Markets," World Bank Publications - Reports 10041, The World Bank Group.
    5. Kym Anderson & Maros Ivanic & William J. Martin, 2014. "Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 311-339, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Donald F. Larson & Julian Lampietti & Christophe Gouel & Carlo Cafiero & John Roberts, 2014. "Food Security and Storage in the Middle East and North Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(1), pages 48-73.
    7. Anderson, Kym & Strutt, Anna, 2012. "Global food markets by 2030: What roles for farm TFP growth and trade policies?," 2012 Conference (56th), February 7-10, 2012, Fremantle, Australia 124192, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    8. Anderson, Kym & Nelgen, Signe, 2012. "Trade Barrier Volatility and Agricultural Price Stabilization," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 36-48.
    9. Cali,Massimiliano & Hollweg,Claire Honore & Ruppert Bulmer,Elizabeth N., 2015. "Seeking shared prosperity through trade," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7314, The World Bank.
    10. Porteous, Obie, 2017. "Empirical effects of short-term export bans: The case of African maize," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 17-26.
    11. Bown, Chad & Crowley, Meredith A., 2016. "The Empirical Landscape of Trade Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 11216, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Anderson, Kym & Strutt, Anna, 2012. "Asia?s Growth, the Changing Geography of World Trade, and Food Security: Projections to 2030," CEPR Discussion Papers 8950, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Gawande, Kishore & Hoekman, Bernard, 2009. "Why Governments Tax or Subsidize Trade: Evidence from Agriculture," Agricultural Distortions Working Paper Series 50300, World Bank.
    14. Kym Anderson, 2013. "Agricultural price distortions: trends and volatility, past, and prospective," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 44(s1), pages 163-171, November.
    15. Emiliano Magrini & Pierluigi Montalbano & Silvia Nenci & Luca Salvatici, 2017. "Agricultural (Dis)Incentives and Food Security: Is There a Link?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 99(4), pages 847-871.
    16. Kornher, Lukas & Kalkuhl, Matthias, 2015. "Cost and benefits from regional cooperation on grain reserves: The case of ECOWAS," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211824, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    17. Matthias Kalkuhl & Lukas Kornher & Matthias Kalkuhl & Irfan Mujahid, 2015. "Food price volatility in developing countries – the role of trade and storage," EcoMod2015 8415, EcoMod.
    18. Kym Anderson & Hans Grinsted Jensen & Signe Nelgen & Anna Strutt, 2016. "What is the Appropriate Counterfactual When Estimating Effects of Multilateral Trade Policy Reform?," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 67(3), pages 764-778, September.
    19. Christophe Gouel & Madhur Gautam & Will J. Martin, 2016. "Managing food price volatility in a large open country: the case of wheat in India," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 811-835.
    20. Kornher, Lukas & Kalkuhl, Matthias, 2013. "Food Price Volatility in Developing Countries and its Determinants," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 52(4), pages 1-32, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Markets and Market Access; Economic Theory&Research; Emerging Markets; Access to Markets; Free Trade;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wbk:wbrwps:5928. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.