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The high food prices experienced over recent years have led to the widespread view that food price volatility has increased. However, volatility has generally been lower over the two most recent decades than previously. Variability over the most recent period has been high but, with the important exception of rice, not out of line with historical experience. There is weak evidence that grains price volatility more generally may be increasing but it is too early to say.

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T his p a p fonrscs on the atmi to which pice changts ocnrm'ng at the fann-leud arc transmitted to the ntail s c c h A /.nice transmission elasticity is dm'vcd which is shown to depend on the degree of m a d power in the food indusQ and the nature of the fwd i n d w t q 5 procnn'ng technology. The o/fsctting role of the /muusing technology and market power in dttennining the extent of price transmission a n highlighted. A casestudy W t s values for the p"'m transmission elasticity for the US kf and poh sectm.

There has been a long-held belief that there is an association between economic growth and increased levels of international trade. However, more recent work has questioned this hypothesis and the re-opening of the debate has identified two key areas of contention. One is the extent to which the effects of openness are conditional on factors omitted from the core regression relationship and hence how the hypothesis is tested. The other is the meaning and measurement of openness and liberalisation. This paper addresses both these areas by exploring the nature of heterogeneity in growth performance among liberalising countries using a difference-in-difference approach. The results show that, while in aggregate there appears to be a positive but small impact of trade liberalisation on growth, this masks a huge range of responses. Empirical analysis of this heterogeneity shows that a one-size-fits-all policy is not necessarily the most effective, and suggests a case-by-case approach is more appropriate. Copyright 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.