The successful completion of negotiations on the Common Fund has not yet led to the hoped-for break-through for any of the commodity agreements belonging to the Integrated Programme for Commodities (IPC). Opposition, particularly by the industrialised countries, but also by individual producer countries, has left but little hope of a successful implementation of price stabilisation as part of an extensive programme. A principal reason for this is that in spite of detailed discussions on this matter by experts and politicians many incorrect assumptions still prevail and controversial opinions on many problems which could be solved empirically are still being discussed. One of these issues is whether price stabilisation would induce an increase or a decrease in fluctuation of the revenue of countries exporting raw materials.