series was obtained from the Economic Research Service from the United States

Department of Agriculture (ERS-USDA: www.ers.usda.gov).

Monthly, Quarterly, and Annual Free on Board (FOB) exports in millions of

USD were downloaded from the IFS-IMF browser and from the United Nations

Comtrade Database (http://comtrade.un.org/). Annual data for agricultural exports

were found at the Statistics Division from the Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAOSTAT: faostat.fao.org).

Monthly, quarterly and annual Consumer Price Indices (CPI-2005=100) were

obtained from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development

(OECD: stats.oecd.org) and from WRDS.

Annual World GDP and Agricultural GDP in levels are provided at the World

Bank (WB: data.worldbank.org). Annual and Quarterly World Real GDP percentage

change and World Real GDP Deflator percentage change were found at IFS-IMF.

3.3.2 Computed Series

Real versions of the variables were computed by deflating using the involved

countries CPIs. This step helped to fill out missing data from directly downloaded

real series and as a benchmark to evaluate data quality.

Unconditional exchange rate volatility measures, M-STD and CV, were

computed. In the case of M-STD: first, the rates of change are calculated as the

natural log of real exchange rate (RER) at month (t) minus the natural log of the RER

at a lagged month (t-1) and the resulting number multiplied by 100. For example, the

January-2001 exchange rate volatility is the standard deviation of the monthly rates of

48