A Handbook of Primary Commodities in the Global Economy
本书通过系列文章介绍初级商品（主要是矿产）市场的性质与运作，涵盖其地理分布、历史价值、贸易政策、价格行为及金融工具，对研究国际贸易和发展经济学的学者有参考价值。
This handbook provides a series of essays on the nature and functioning of primary commodity markets, mostly those of a minerals nature. The first two chapters introduce the importance of primary commodities in a geographical and international context. Their history is described in terms of their economic value to national economies, the role of transport in their dispersion, and the attempts to regulate and control them. Certain commodities have major strategic value. Nations that can produce these commodities have grown faster than their neighbours. The latter thus have a global dependence on sourcing commodities. Recent examples are the pressures placed by growing Chinese and Indian demands on raw materials and energy. The next three separate chapters deal with issues of the functioning of these markets: how primary commodities are traded, how their prices behave, and how financial instruments have expanded to facilitate their exchange. Commodities trade internationally under an established system of commercial policies. Protectionism can restrict their trade and positive comparative advantage is desirable. While separate tariffs and other mechanisms have been employed to restrict commodity trade, the more important problem is tariff escalation in which higher processed grades of a commodity face higher tariffs. The chapter dealing with price behaviour makes considerable effort to demonstrate the impacts of short- and long-run price movements. Short-run price fluctuations have proven to be very unstable, to the point where International Commodity Agreements have been formed that would employ export controls, buffer stocks or other mechanisms to stabilise prices. In the long run, prices have often not risen sufficiently to secure profitable returns to producers in exporting developing countries. Commodity exchanges have expanded to provide financial instruments to deal with this price instability. Options and future contracts exist as trading instruments, and hedgers and speculators buy and sell contracts of specific commodity units. Exchange trading can reduce price instability, although price booms sometimes disrupt market performance.