The International Demand for Thailand's Rice Exports

The familiar 'small country' assumption is tested empirically in this paper, focussing
upon the long-run international demand for Thailand's rice exports and drawing upon
recent developments in the statistical analysis of economic time series. A relatively
robust long-run price elasticity of export demand is obtained, at just under 2. The
literature on the export demand for manufactured goods has shown the central
importance of the 'normalisation' used during estimation. Our results suggest that this
issue may not be as important in the case of primary commodity exports, at least not
where the exporting country possesses a degree of monopoly power.