ABSTRACT
The failure of the market to bring world supply and demand into line meant that world coffee relations had to be managed through direct intervention in the market by an authorised international body. The 1962 International Coffee Agreement came provisionally into force on July 1 1963. The formal mechanisms of the various agreements appear, on the surface at least, to translate the stated commitment to objectives of neutrality and fairness into the form of the actual mechanisms. The main problem faced by the signatories to the 1962 Agreement was global overproduction. The export restriction scheme for coffee was largely inherited from the earlier Coffee Study Group and this has remained the normal method of intervention which economists have favoured. The choice of quotas as the primary formal mechanism raised the question as to what exceptions to quotas the Agreement would allow.
