Overview
With the dramatic changes in the global political scene, many developing countries are re-evaluating their economic and political priorities. This reappraisal scrutinizes their dependence on specific commodities and the crisis into which this market has been thrown in the last decade. This work relates the main theoretical and empirical issues in the collapse in commodity prices since 1980—a major cause of the Third World economic crises—to perceived conflicts of interest between developed and developing countries. Maizels continues his study by discussing the elements of a new approach to an effective commodity policy for the future. He includes coverage of such major problems as the impact of commodity instability on the global economy, market structure, as well as synthetics and diversification. This study will be of interest to academics and students of development economics and international trade as well as to policymakers in developing countries.