Commodity Price Stabilization in an Age of Overlapping Emergencies: The Case for International Buffer Stocks

Summary

In our time of overlapping emergencies, price shocks triggered by production and trade disruptions in systemically important commodity markets such as energy, food, and critical raw materials are likely to occur more frequently in the future. As the past three years have shown, such commodity price shocks can trigger domino effects along the value chain in both the Global North and South, leading to devastating humanitarian, political, and macroeconomic consequences and impeding necessary green transformations. Therefore, we propose establishing institutions at the regional, national, and international levels that can correct supply disruptions and immediately cushion price fluctuations on commodity markets in future crises.

This Policy Brief is a summary of the PERI Working Paper, Towards a Post-neoliberal Stabilization Paradigm: Revisiting International Buffer Stocks in an Age of Overlapping Emergencies Based on the Case of Food.