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FERDI Workshop on Commodity Market Instability

Last updated on June 28, 2015

I spent part of last week in Clermont-Ferrand, at the Fondation pour les études et recherches sur le développement international (FERDI), at a workshop with the lengthy title of “Commodity Market Instability and Asymmetries in Developing Countries: Development Impacts and Policies,”  and which was convened by Alexandros Sarris, of the University of Athens and FERDI.

The workshop’s purpose and themes were as follows:

The general purpose of the workshop is on the one hand to examine the state of the art in the area of asymmetries and irreversibilities relating to commodity market instability and development, with the purpose to first pinpoint gaps in current research, and secondly to highlight promising areas of policy intervention to aid developing countries to manage/cope with market instability. As the topic is very large, and impossible to cover in all of its various aspects, the workshop will restrict its proceedings to a set of specific themes that are judged to have been underemphasized in previous empirical and policy development economics research. While commodity market instability can originate in many ways, the workshop will be restricted to market instability arising from natural or other unpredicted events, as well as unforeseen market developments.

You can find the program and the papers presented at the workshop here by clicking on the relevant tab. The event was an excellent occasion meet with colleagues old and new and discuss a topic which has occupied a sizable proportion of my professional life as well as to receive feedback on the experimental work I have been doing with Yu Na Lee and David Just on price risk preferences.