Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is abundantly endowed with natural resources, whose value has increased in recent decades. But this has not led to increased benefits for the majority of the people. A recent IMF working paper sheds more light on the challenge of making Africa’s wealth work for most Africans. Ahead of the forthcoming annual Cambridge… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: commodities
The oil price and short and long run supply
The biggest topic in the global economy remains the oil price. It’s notoriously difficult to forecast commodity prices but how can we make sense of what would push the price up or down? A basic demand and supply framework gets us quite a long way * A market consists of demand, supply and some mechanism… Continue Reading
Natural gas is not (yet) a global commodity
A global commodity, in economic or investment terms, is a standardised, homogeneous good that sells for the same price everywhere, subject to transport costs and tax. Oil is the classic global commodity. A chart from the IMF World Economic Outlook, just published in October 2014, shows that natural gas isn’t. But it probably will become more… Continue Reading
Commodities don’t help an investment portfolio
Investing in commodities (oil, gas, metals etc.) has gone from being a niche activity to a mainstream portfolio choice in the last fifteen years. This was driven by the long period of fast growth of commodity prices, which made a number of people very rich. The wider argument for commodities investment though has been that… Continue Reading