..., such health or unemployment shocks to the household head. The effectiveness of informal risk-sharing against commodity price shocks that are correlated across households in a village is not clear, and is an empirical question. Figure 2. Monthly International Coffee Price Index Source: Author...

...This chapter reviews the HIPC debt relief initiative to suggest that unless the commodity price shocks are taken into consideration, many of the beneficiaries may not exit the debt tap. The chapter presents approximate costs of expanding the HIPC Initiative to include all LDCs and SVS...

...The author analyses inflation in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community. First, a semi-structural VAR is used to identify the sources of inflation empirically; the chapter finds that fiscal shocks and the commodity price shocks that generally drive them have been important sources...