Coffee prices reached their lowest levels in 30 years in 2001 (and in 100 years in real terms). In almost all coffee producing countries, such prices are unable to cover production costs and have led to serious social and economic problems, including increased poverty, indebtedness and abandonment of coffee farms. The heavy reliance on coffee renders APC vulnerable to markets downturns and to the competitive pressures that exist in the industry. The coffee crisis has actually been "brewing" for some time now, but has recently percolated as the reality of far reaching structural changes in global coffee production and marketing are being recognized. While there are strategies that could be taken by the coffee industry to improve on the current situation, these are unlikely to result in a quick recovery of world prices or farms' profitability. Coffee farmers face at least two distinct sets of problems associated with prices; the outright price level and volatility. Historically, coffee prices have been among the most volatile of all commodity prices. Cyclical price volatility, particUlarly within the crop season, can be managed through price risk management instruments. However, the secular price trend requires other longer-term elements, such as diversification or improvements in quality and productivity. The paper concludes that debt within the financial structures of industry players is a result of the crisis and to solve the coffee crisis strategies focussed on raising and stabilizing incomes of coffee producers is the ultimate goal and not increasing production statistics. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, 2003.

This thesis examines the pricing efficiency of the Quebec corn and soybean meal markets to answer a hypothesis on the part of the local livestock industry as to the existence of pricing inefficiency in the feed input industry. In evaluating the pricing efficiency of the markets, this research used two approaches: an analysis of market and an analysis using econometric models, focusing on price information structure accuracy and rapidity. The weekly data series of corn and soybean meal price are from selected cities in Canada and the US cover the crop years of 1990--1996. / The accuracy is addressed by applying Faminow's model for testing the pricing systems and Houck's model for testing price transmission symmetry. The results showed that the Quebec corn market is accurate based on the evidence of (i) a relatively unconcentrated market structure; (ii) evidence of an FOB pricing system; and (iii) symmetric price adjustments. Even though the soybean meal market is also based on an FOB pricing system, it is not accurate because the price adjustments are asymmetric and its market structure is highly concentrated. / The rapidity is addressed by applying Vector Error Correction (VEC) models in three ways: (i) by investigating the cointegration relationships, (ii) by assessing the strength of the relationships, and (iii) by measuring dynamic price response. The results showed that the strength of the relationships and the speed of Quebec corn price adjustment in response to external shocks are less than those found in Ontario and Southeastern US markets, while soybean meal is comparable to those markets. / Thus, by means of an assessment of market structure, marketing margin, price information transmission accuracy and rapidity, this research concludes that the corn market in Quebec is relatively pricing efficient while the soybean meal market is not.

The objective of this thesis is to examine price performance, and estimate the aggregate export and food crop output response to output price and non-price variables in tropical Africa and its four main agro-climatic regions. The analysis of real producer prices indicates that there are more countries that exhibited a statistically significant decrease in real producer prices than a significant increase. Moreover, nominal protection coefficient analysis shows that African crop exporters, on average, received a small proportion (50 to 60 percent) of border prices. Using pooled cross-section and time series data, a partial adjustment model was then specified to estimate agricultural export and food output response. The results show that aggregate agricultural export and food supply responses to output prices in tropical Africa are both positive and significant but inelastic. The price elasticity for the export crop output in Tropical Africa is 0.02 in the short run and 0.04 in the long run, and for the food crop output 0.05 in the short-run and 0.07 in the long-run. The responsiveness of agriculture varies, however, across the main agro-climatic regions in tropical Africa. The estimated coefficient of the price variable and price elasticity estimates regions reveal that producers in the Eastern and Southern Africa, and Western Africa regions were responsive to price incentives, while producers in the semi-arid Sudano Sahel and Central Africa regions were not. The trend variable, as proxy of technology, is positive and significant in most regions, suggesting that the provision of non-price factors along with favourable price incentives, could be very effective in raising agricultural production in these regions.

In this study, exchange rate pass-through into the export prices and import prices is analyzed separately at the disaggregate level. The study also attempts to differentiate exchange rate pass-through in the short-run and long-run. To analyze pass-through in the short-run, dynamic modeling is used. To analyze pass-through in the long-run, cointegration analysis is conducted. Estimation results show that exchange rate pass-through into the import prices is complete even at the disaggregate level. However, there is variation in the pass-through into the export prices across sectors both in the short-run and long-run. Not all exporting sectors, even in a small open economy like Turkey, are price takers in the foreign markets.

Graduation date: 1971

Thesis (Ph. D. in Economics)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2005. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

American options are the most commonly traded financial derivatives in the market. Pricing these options fairly, so as to avoid arbitrage, is of paramount importance. Closed form solutions for American put options cannot be utilised in practice and so numerical techniques are employed. This thesis looks at the work done by other researchers to find an analytic solution to the American put option pricing problem and suggests a practical method, that uses Monte Carlo simulation, to approximate the American put option price. The theory behind option pricing is first discussed using a discrete model. Once the concepts of arbitrage-free pricing and hedging have been dealt with, this model is extended to a continuous-time setting. Martingale theory is introduced to put the option pricing theory in a more formal framework. The construction of a hedging portfolio is discussed in detail and it is shown how financial derivatives are priced according to a unique riskneutral probability measure. Black-Scholes model is discussed and utilised to find closed form solutions to European style options. American options are discussed in detail and it is shown that under certain conditions, American style options can be solved according to closed form solutions. Various numerical techniques are presented to approximate the true American put option price. Chief among these methods is the Richardson extrapolation on a sequence of Bermudan options method that was developed by Geske and Johnson. This model is extended to a Repeated-Richardson extrapolation technique. Finally, a Monte Carlo simulation is used to approximate Bermudan put options. These values are then extrapolated to approximate the price of an American put option. The use of extrapolation techniques was hampered by the presence of non-uniform convergence of the Bermudan put option sequence. When convergence was uniform, the approximations were accurate up to a few cents difference.

This thesis is based on three papers examining Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) financial markets. The member countries of the GCC are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These countries have transitioned from developing to frontier markets over the past ten years, but there is considerable debate about whether GCC economies are efficient or affected by shocks in oil and other commodity markets. The first paper (chapter 2) considers GCC stock market returns and examines how they are affected by oil price shocks using a bivariate VAR-GARCH(1,1) approach. The conclusion of this essay is that GCC economies are more affected by shocks than are other countries considered for comparison purposes. The second paper (chapter 3) discusses how food prices are affected by oil price shocks, and it examines possible parameter shifts between food and oil that result from four recent events, including renewable fuel policies and the financial crisis. The third paper (chapter 4) uses an empirical approach to compare a least squares model and a non-linear Markov switching model to measure the effect of newspaper sentiment on stock market performance. The results indicate that all information is important to stock market investors and that non-linear models are better predictors of stock market performance then linear models when using data from newspaper articles. Chapter 5 offers some final conclusions and remarks.

Using crops for fuel generates concerns over competition with food uses. As Rajagopal et al (2009) asserts, “In 2008 the world entered a food crisis amid record-high commodity and energy prices that induced hunger and political unrest in developing countries, by export restrictions in top grain-producing countries”. This took place at the same time when biofuel production, reached its pinnacle in developed countries. This paper examines the effect that biofuel prices and or production has had on food prices in Brazil and U.S. by employing the panel cointegration and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method of analysis. In regressing food prices as a function of demand and supply factors, such as oil prices, biofuel prices, interest rates and biofuel production, the study found that the increase in biofuels production over the past eighteen years has had a significant impact on food prices. Over the period January 1995- December 2013, the study estimates that a one hundred percent increase in biofuels production across time and between countries results in the increase of food prices by 21,9%. The study therefore rejects the null hypothesis that states, biofuel production does not have a statistically significant negative impact on food prices in U.S. and Brazil. , and accepts the alternative that biofuel production does have a statistically significant negative impact on food prices in U.S. and Brazil. Other predictors of food prices that the study revealed as significant were oil and interest rates. Policy recommendations for other countries like South Africa are therefore, made based on the results obtained.

Magister Commercii - MCom / This mini-thesis examines the speed and magnitude of exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices in South Africa. The shift from fixed exchange rate regimes to a system of floating exchange rates by many countries after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system increased the role of the exchange rate in the determination of inflation. In theory, exchange rate depreciation causes inflation via a process called exchange rate pass-through (ERPT). The effect of exchange rate variations on inflation is of special interest to policy makers especially for countries under inflation targeting regimes. The knowledge of the speed and magnitude of ERPT to domestic inflation (import, producer and consumer inflation) is important in the designing of an optimal monetary policy mix which is needed to ensure price stability. South Africa is one of the countries that moved to an inflation targeting regime under a system of a floating exchange rate. This study therefore aims to empirically determine the speed and magnitude of ERPT to domestic prices in the short run and long run using VAR and VEC models. The empirical results show that ERPT to import prices is immediate and moderately high reaching a peak of about 45% and 47% within three quarters for the VAR and VEC models respectively. In contrast, ERPT to producer and consumer prices is gradual and low. For instance, long-run ERPT is below 30% for producer prices and around 20% for consumer prices. Moreover, the results indicate a high pass-through (above 75%) of producer price shocks to consumer prices. In sharp contrast, the extent of pass-through of import price shocks to consumer prices as reported in the VECM is low at approximately 10% in the short run and declining to approximately 2% in the long run. / National Research Foundation (NRF)