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Papua New Guinea (PNG) has faced a foreign exchange (forex) shortage since 2015. The Bank of PNG has resorted to forex rationing to protect reserves, leading to a large backlog of orders and import compression. This paper surveys the structure of PNGʼs forex market and analyses recent market conditions. We argue that a real exchange rate depreciation is required to restore currency convertibility. We develop a forex market model that features a backlog of unmet orders which suggests that a frontloaded depreciation is preferred to an often‐favored gradual adjustment. Empirical results indicate that the governmentʼs large budget deficits have contributed to the forex shortage, highlighting the need for greater fiscal restraint. In the longer term, we argue for more exchange rate flexibility and forex allocation through competitive auction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open‐air marketplaces are vital to food security, livelihoods, and the national economy in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Over the past 60 years, rapid growth of urban populations, changes in global commodity prices, and the decline in value of the PNG currency have stimulated demand for domestic fresh food. Selling fresh food in marketplaces has also become an attractive way to earn money for rural producers, whose returns on labour on their export crops have declined, and for urban residents struggling to make a living. This in turn has led to significant changes in PNGʼs marketplaces: spatial and temporal changes, changes in what is bought and sold, changes in who is selling, and changes in how food is transacted. In this paper, we bring together research on PNGʼs marketplaces from between 1961 and 2022 to document these changes and their causes, alongside important continuities, and to examine the implications and substantial gaps in our knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a dataset on ministerial tenure in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The dataset, which spans from 1972 to 2017 and covers 15 governments and 321 ministers, is used to study ministerial duration and stability. To do this, two measures of ministerial duration and two stability indicators have been developed. These measures show that ministerial instability is high in PNG but it has not become worse over time. They also show, however, that instability has varied considerably between governments. Drawing on PNGʼs political history, this article provides a discussion of this variation by examining the circumstances of particular governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]