How to Cope with Volatile Commodity Export Prices: Four Proposals

Jeffrey Frankel

Working Paper Series from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government

Abstract: Countries that specialize in commodities have in recent years been hit by high volatility in world prices for their exports. This paper suggests four ways that commodity-exporters can make themselves less vulnerable. (1) They can use option contracts to hedge against short-term declines in the commodity price without giving up the upside, as Mexico has shown. (2) Commodity-linked bonds can hedge longer-term risk, and often have a natural ultimate counter-party in multinational corporations that depend on the commodity as an input. (3) The well-documented pro-cyclicality of fiscal policy among commodity exporters can be reduced by insulating official forecasters against optimism bias, as Chile has shown. (4) Monetary policy can be made automatically more counter-cyclical, judged by the criterion of currency appreciation in reaction to positive terms-of-trade shocks, under either of two regimes: Peggers can add the export commodity to a currency basket (CCB, for “Currency-plus-Commodity Basket†) and others can target Nominal Income instead of the CPI.

JEL-codes: E00 F00 G00 O00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Working Paper: How to Cope with Volatile Commodity Export Prices: Four Proposals (2017)
Working Paper: How to Cope with Volatile Commodity Export Prices: Four Proposals (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp17-033

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