@article{Odularu:331516,
      recid = {331516},
      author = {Odularu, Gbadebo Olusegun},
      title = {Vector Autoregressive Modeling of Agricultural Commodity  Trade: The Case of Africa’s Exports to the United States},
      address = {2006},
      pages = {19},
      year = {2006},
      note = {Presented at the 9th Annual Conference on Global Economic  Analysis, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia},
      abstract = {It is pertinent to note that trade in agricultural  commodities still dominates the export scene of the African  economies. Moreover, the agricultural sector constitutes a  significant part of the whole economy and employs a  considerable proportion of the labour force. Furthermore,  increasing agricultural exports is an intermediate step  toward restoring external balance of payments equilibrium,  a central component of most economic structural adjustment  programmes (ESAP) initiated in the 1980s and 1990s. Against  this backdrop, the major objective of this research is to  increase our understanding of the specification and  estimation of agricultural commodity trade models as well  as to provide veritable tools for trade policy analysis.  More specifically, the study aims at building a set of  dynamic, theory-based econometric models which are able to  capture both short-run and long-run effects of income and  price changes, and which can be used for prediction and  policy simulation under alternative assumed conditions In  this study, the methodology to be adopted will be a  relatively unrestricted, data determined, econometric  modeling approach based on the vector autoregressive  process, which is very popular for modeling multiple time  series. Further, econometric models will be constructed for  SSA‘s agricultural exports to the United States (U.S). In  an attempt to provide a broad-based commodity coverage,  this study will also explore whether the chosen modeling  approach is able to capture the essentials of the  behavioural relationships underlying the SSA-US trade flow.  The study will show that vector autoregressive processes  are well suited for the study of agricultural trade flows,  which are typically non-stationary time series.  Furthermore, the research will reveal the importance of  inspection of the time series properties and the  examination of both short- and long-run adjustment when  studying trade functions. Finally, it is crucial to note  that the different dynamic responses will often be critical  to the outcomes of the types of trade policies considered.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/331516},
}