Volatility in commodity prices strongly influences the business cycle in these countries. Strongly booming world market prices of primary products, especially from 2006, and their subsequent collapse from the start of the global financial crisis, have made this fate once again painfully clear. Figure 1.8 shows that long-term growth rates of countries at the lower end of the global value chain are well below those at the higher end, and hence have been a source of perpetuating global inequality.