Trade Exchange Rate in Primary Commodities and its Impact on the Human Development Index : An analysis from the cocoa case of Ivory Coast

Description

On January 11th, the French government led by Edouard Balladur decided to reduce by the half the nominal value of the CFA Franc. Coined in 1948 by France for its former colonies, this currency had been enjoying a fixed parity against the French Franc. Technically, the devaluation was supposed to increase the purchasing power of the 14 countries involved in it, including the improvement of the Human Development Index (HDI) because it would hopefully make imported goods more expensive, which will force the consumers to purchase local items. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the economy of these countries is mainly based on raw commodities, namely cocoa and coffee beans, this economic measure worked only for the first two years.