Farmers' exposure to price shocks in deregulated markets ; Exposition des producteurs aux chocs de prix sur les marchés libéralisés

Abstract

National audience ; Post-reform markets in commodity-exporting countries in Africa and Latin America are generally characterized by the withdrawal of government organizations from commodity marketing, the emergence of new private agents operating as traders and exporters, and farmers' participation in the newly-reconfigured market regulatory authorities. However, the liberalization process varied across countries and resulted in the emergence of various marketing systems. This empirical analysis aims at providing better understanding of the situation faced by farmers likely to be exposed to both high world price volatility and possible market power of private agents. Focusing on three coffee exporting countries which have experienced market liberalization in the mid-1990s but display very different marketing systems today, I show that asymmetric adjustments of producer prices that characterized the pre-reform period and were favorable to farmers have disappeared in the post-reform period. Moreover, in spite of farmers' participation in market authorities, largest decreases in world prices may be transmitted relatively quickly to farmers when the number of exporters remains small.