Indexation of UNCTAD core commodity prices by buffer stocks or export quotas?: A comparison of the benefits for two developing economies

General equilibrium models are used to study the resource allocative and income implications for the Ivory Coast and Kenya of indexation of agricultural commodity prices. Two indexation methods are investigated, (i) buffer stock transactions, and (ii) export quota entitlements. The results suggest that there are efficiency losses associated with the buffer stock option which reduce the GDP gains below that indicated by the pure terms of trade gains. Efficiency gains associated with the export quota method however result in GDP increases above those indicated by the pure terms of trade gains.     

Economic and legal institutionalism: What can they learn from each other?

The main argument of this paper is that both constitutional political economy and institutional legal theory can benefit from adopting certain central notions from each other. On the one hand, the legal notion of validity can help to clarify certain obscurities concerning the mode of existence of institutions in constitutional political economy. On the other hand, the economic notion of voluntary choice can serve as a point of departure for institutional legal theory in developing substantive criteria for the evaluation of legal systems without appealing to natural law ideas. The author wishes to thank Bob Lieshout and Bernard Steunenberg for their comments.     

The impact of government deficits on money growth in developing countries

This paper investigates the relationship between government budget deficits and money growth in the developing countries for which reliabile data exist. It is sometimes suggested that it is more likely that money growth follows debt growth in developing countries, due to the embryonic state of capital markets and because the central bank generally comes under direct control of the minister of finance. Our results provide only mixed support for this contention, however. In the majority of countries in our sample there is no evidence that government deficits affect money growth. For high-inflation years there seems to be more support for a relationship between deficits and money growth.     

Demand for coffee in Sweden: The role of prices, preferences and market power

There is a widespread belief that consumer coffee prices are high relative to bean prices and that lower consumer prices would lead to substantial increases in bean exports from Third-World countries. This issue is evaluated by analysing how retail prices, preferences and market power influence coffee demand in Sweden. A demand function is estimated for the period 1968–2002 and used, together with information on import prices of coffee beans, to simulate an oligopoly model. This approach gives estimates of the maximum average degree of market power and shows how coffee demand would react to reductions in marginal cost to its minimum level. The maximum level of market power is found to be low, but it generates large spreads between consumer and bean prices because the price elasticity has low absolute values. Moreover, the impact of a price decrease would be small because long-run coffee demand is dominated by changes in the population structure in combination with different preferences across age groups. Hence, a change to perfect competition would only have a negligible effect on bean imports.     

The relationship between government accounts and national accounts, with special reference to the netherlands

National accounts are a macro-economic accounting system that is compiled on the basis of a globally harmonized accounting standard, that is SNA93/ESA95. To a large extent, the SNA93/ESA95 accounting principles are also suitable for government (micro-)accounting purposes, if only because the accounts drawn up according to this standard are comparable across (types of) units and over time. That facilitates performance monitoring and benchmarking. In addition, the ESA95 guidelines and procedures deal with innovative transactions and accounting, which increases the credibility of the accounts. Finally, accounts for government units are then directly comparable with the macroeconomic accounts, which facilitates the link between forecasts for the national economy and drawing up government budgets. This paper also describes the present conversion of government accounts to national accounts for the government sector in the Netherlands and the plans of the Dutch government to change from a cash-based to an accrual government accounting system.