Commodity concentration and export earnings instability: a shift from cross-section to time series analysis

Conventionally commodity concentration has been regarded as a major factor contributing to the short-term instability in earnings experienced by developing countries. The repeated and unexpected lack of correspondence between the conventional view and results of empirical studies has generated attempts to identify the limitations of the customary analytical framework. This paper attempts to derive a more satisfactory alternative framework. Application of this alternative approach to export data for a sample of developing countries produces results which, in contrast to the evidence of previous studies, indicate the widespread existence of a statistically significant, positive relationship between concentration and export instability