"Over the past ten years, economic volatility has come into its own after being treated for decades as a secondary phenomenon in the business cycle literature. This book organizes empirical and policy results for economists and development policy practitioners into four parts: basic features, including the impact of volatility on growth and poverty; commodity price volatility; the financial sector's dual role as an absorber and amplifier of shocks; and the management and prevention of macroeconomic crises. The latter section includes a cross-country study, ease studies on Argentina and Russia, and lessons from the debt default episodes of the 1980s and 1990s."--BOOK JACKET. Read more... Volatility : definitions and consequences / Holger Wolf -- Volatility and growth / Viktoria Hnatkovska and Norman Loayza -- Volatility, income distribution, and poverty / Thomas Laursen and Sandeep Mahajan -- Agricultural commodity price volatility / Jan Dehn, Christopher Gilbert, and Panos Varangis -- Managing oil booms and busts in developing countries / Julia Devlin and Michael Lewin -- Finance and volatility / Stijn Claessens -- Evaluating pricing signals from the bond markets / John J. Merrick, Jr. -- Managing macroeconomic crises : policy lessons / Jeffrey Frankel and Shang-Jin Wei -- Lessons from the Russian crisis of 1998 and recovery / Brian Pinto, Evsey Gurvich, and Sergei Ulatov -- Argentina's macroeconomic collapse : causes and lessons / Luis ServeΜn and Guillermo Perry -- Default episodes in the 1980s and 1990s : what have we learned? / Punam Chuhan and Federico Sturzenegger