Calculating border prices for grains, oilseeds, and oilseed products

We expect this pattern to persist in the future. Trends in these commodity prices and ocean freight rates are calculated for the l97O"s and the first half of the l98O"s. These trends are used to project prices and freight costs to 1990 and 1995. The analysis shows that commodity prices and freight rates in 1986 and 1987 were very depressed by historical standards and are expected to rise in subsequent years. Our projections of commodity prices to 1995 compare very favorably with those recently made by the World Bank. It is relatively easy to use projected commodity prices and ocean freight rates presented in this paper to derive border prices for individual countries. (Author abstract)