Theodosios Palaskas

Testing market integration: New approaches with case material from the West Bengal food economy

Given the inferential dangers of received methods, a new methodology is introduced to provide a sequence of tests, using weekly spot prices, to examine the dynamic relationship of market commodity prices in three locations in West Bengal. Tests suggest that the markets are integrated, but a lower degree of integration of paddy and rice prices is identified. The hypothesis of full market integration is rejected. Structural and institutional factors which affect the specifics of performance are identified. Physical isolation, the institutional complexity of marketing systems and contractual forms, the polarisation of assets, assets specificity, the institutional control of information and price formation, the underdevelopment of linked markets and the idiosyncratic implementation of state regulatory policy and auto‐regulatory responses enter the explanation.

The Prebisch-Singer Hypothesis Revisited

Since the seminal contributions of Raul Prebisch (1950) and Hans Singer (1950) on the tendency of the terms of trade of developing countries with developed countries to deteriorate over the long term, the ensuing debate on this issue has focused, until quite recently, on the evidence provided by the relative movements in the price of non-oil commodities and the unit value of manufactures exported by the developed countries. This was understandable and, indeed, entirely relevant since the greater part of the merchandise trade between these two groups of countries before the oil price increases of the 1970s had consisted of a ‘vertical’ exchange of non-oil primary commodities from developing countries for manufactured goods from developed countries.

Land Titling and Technical Efficiency Among Small Coffee Producers in Honduras

ABSTRACT Land titling the formal registration of land previously used without formal title, is a policy that is currently in vogue throughout the developing world. As part of this trend, Honduras undertook a land titling project in 1982. Expected outcomes of the project included increased access to credit for small farmers, and subsequently, increased on-farm investment and enhanced tenure security. Analysis of the survey data indicates that titling by itself did not bring the intended outcomes, and that institutional factors must be considered in policy design if policies are to have their intended effect.

Hedge Funds Development and their Role in Economic Crises

Abstract The rapid development of hedge funds and their emanating critical role in the financial markets and the financial system globally, combined with the increased frequency of economic crises during the last 25 years, brought them to the centre of discussions concerning the following issue: «To what extent the operation of hedge funds can affect the birth, peak and even geographic expansion of economic crises?». In this context, the present paper aims to contribute to the limited and sporadic discussion of whether the hedge funds could be held responsible for economic crises. To this extend the growth and the impact of hedge funds on financial crises is analysed and evaluated using the HFR database -in their birth, aggravation or even geographic expansion- both from a historical perspective and in relation to the 2007-today crisis. Based on the evidence presented in this paper, hedge funds cannot be blamed for the birth of the crises of the last 25 years. Comparing the data across the different crises, it becomes obvious that, with the exception of the 2007 subprime crisis, where almost all hedge fund strategies suffered considerable losses, in all other crises studied in the present paper, the hedge fund strategies with a negative return were the ones that had an exposure to the specific sector and/or region that was in the centre of the crisis i.e. Emerging market strategy presented substantial negative monthly performance over the Asian crisis, Convertible arbitrage strategy was affected by the dot-com crisis, etc.