Low-income countries typically depend on primary commodity exports and face severe constraints in their diversification efforts. The objective of our project is to closely analyse the difficulties these countries face in the context of macroeconomic management and economic development, and to propose policy measures the international donors and trade community ought to enact in support of these countries.

We concentrate our research on primary commodities around three sub-projects:

(1) Terms of trade, price volatility and market structures
(2) Price fuluctuation and poverty
(3) Financial mechanisms to deal with commodity price fluctuations