Knowledge and Education as International Commodities

Commodities and International Business Cycles

Output growth in the U.S., a commodity-importing country, increases its demand for imports of commodities and therefore commodity prices, which benefits commodityexporting countries but has adverse effects on commodity-importing countries. Hence, in the data, U.S. output is more positively correlated with outputs of commodity-exporting countries than commodity-importing countries. In other word...

Policy Issues in International Trade and Commodities

Note The purpose of this series of studies is to analyse policy issues and to stimulate discussions in the area of international trade and development. The series includes studies by UNCTAD staff and by distinguished researchers from other organizations and academia. This paper represents the personal views of the author only, and not the views of the UNCTAD secretariat or its member States. Th...

Information Technology as Commodities

This paper is about a model of software delivery known as Software as a Service (SaaS). We believe that companies will pay for software as they pay for electricity and telephone. They will pay for what they use. We present why and when it happened. That it came from the outsourcing idea and became possible by the advances in the Internet. Software retailers will become service provides. The mai...

Externalities as Commodities: Comment

Commodities as Collateral∗

This paper proposes and tests a theory of using commodities as collateral for financing. In the presence of capital control and financial frictions, financial investors import commodities and pledge them as collateral to capture the higher expected return in the importing country. The collateral demand for commodities increases commodity prices globally; it also increases futures risk premium i...