Commodity market instability and asymmetries in developing countries: Development impacts and policies

Risk, defined as exposure to uncertain future events, is part of everyday life, and people and countries have learned to deal with it over centuries. However, there is a growing realization that uncertainty and risk maybe crucial to a country’s growth and development as well as its welfare. Commodity market risks in particular are well known to affect development and welfare in a variety of ways and it is important to understand these so as to prioritize policy actions, and to design strategies to avoid the undesirable parts of the consequences. Commodity market shocks may have both asymmetric patterns and asymmetric impacts, namely differing in booms and busts, or create irreversibilities that may hamper subsequent development. While considerable research has taken place in the past to understand the influences of commodity market shocks, asymmetries and irreversibilities have not been studied much. It was to this general topic that a conference was addressed in June 2015 by Ferdi. This book is a collection of the policy briefs edited after the conference.