Commodity Prices Recede from Record Highs

Several commodity prices appear to have peaked earlier this year and crude oil prices have even fallen by more than 10 dollars per barrel from their recent all-time high level. Is the worst over for buyers of raw materials or will prices rise again in the coming months?     

Commodity Markets and Commodity Mutual Funds

Fundamental economic factors—market demand and supply conditions—provide the most consistent explanation for trends in commodity prices from 2004 to 2011. This paper presents empirical evidence that the rise and fall of commodity prices on a monthly basis can be strongly linked to the value of the U.S. dollar and the world business cycle—in particular, to the strength or weakness in emerging market economies such as China, Brazil, India, and Russia. Despite concerns raised by some policymakers that increased commodity index investment (the financialization of commodities) has driven commodity price movements, numerous academic studies have concluded that index-based investing has not moved prices or exacerbated volatility in commodity markets in recent years. An examination of weekly and monthly net flows into commodity mutual funds reveals that these flows have little or no effect on the overall growth rate of commodity prices. In particular, weekly flows into commodity mutual funds do not lead to future commodity price changes. These results are consistent with academic papers that find little or no impact of commodity index investors on commodity prices in individual markets. The paper concludes by briefly discussing three key factors that illustrate why flows into commodity mutual funds cannot explain commodity price movements.     

Production cuts to support oil prices

Most commodity quotations have continued to fall in recent months as a result of the weaker global economy. Crude oil prices, on the other hand, had been maintained at the high level targeted by OPEC since the start of the year, but lately they, too, have started to fall. Is the success of the oil exporters' change in production policy built to last?     

Raw materials prices remain low

While there has been little change in prices for industrial commodities since last autumn, the price of oil continued its downward trend to the end of the year. Many commodity exporting countries are suffering under the burden of low prices. Will the long-awaited recovery begin this year?     

Raw Material Prices at New Record Highs

Crude oil prices as well as most other commodity prices continued their upward trend this year, and several quotations reached new historic highs. But there is a ray of hope for buyers of raw materials that prices might come down somewhat.      

Strong Renminbi Policy & the Coming of Age of China's Outward FDI

This,we believe,will be the year of Beijing's strong renminbi policy.Despite concerns about exports,we believe Beijing will keep the CNY pegged against a strong dollar.Combined with cheaper commodity prices and the pressing need of many overseas commodity firms to deleverage,this will create the perfect opportunity for China's firms to significantly ramp up their outward foreign direct investment (FDI).     

Slower Price Rises in Commodity Markets

The rise in commodity prices continues due to strong demand from emerging economies in Asia. But not all prices are going up. Several industrial raw materials seem to have peaked earlier this year. Is this the beginning of a general change in price direction?     

GROWTH,COMMODITY PRICES,INFLATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

A primary commodity price boom is underway. Given the role of internationally traded primary commodities as inputs into the productive process in the industrialized world, an important question arises: namely what effects will this price‐boom exert upon wage and price inflation in industrialized countries? In order to address this question, we specify and estimate a system of equations in which the key dependent variables are world commodity prices, the domestic inflation rate for finished goods and the rate of domestic industrial wage inflation. This model is estimated against data for each of three major industrialized countries: Japan, the UK and the USA and the implications of the results thus obtained are explored.     

A cointegrated commodity pricing model

We propose a commodity pricing model that extends the Gibson–Schwartz two‐factor model to incorporate the effect of linear relations among commodity spot prices, and provide a condition under which such linear relations represent cointegration. We derive futures and call option prices for the proposed model, and indicate that, unlike in Duan and Pliska (2004), the linear relations among commodity prices should affect commodity derivative prices, even when the volatilities of commodity returns are constant. Using crude oil and heating oil market data, we estimate the model and apply the results to the hedging of long‐term futures using short‐term ones.     

The macroeconomic effects of commodity market disruptions in open economies

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic effects of two of the principal causes of the commodity price boom in 1973-74: bad harvests and commodity speculation. The analysis uses a dynamic, fixprice-flexprice model in which exchange rates are flexible and commodities serve as both an asset and a consumption good. Commodity market disruptions of the magnitude that occurred in 1973-74 are shown to have significant effects on prices, exchange rates, trade flows, and capital flows — effects that persist long after the initial shock has passed. Asset markets, defined to include commodity markets, play a central role in transmitting these shocks throughout the world economy.     

BRAZIL-UNITED STATES TRADE: CAPITAL FLIGHT THROUGH ABNORMAL PRICING

Detailed analysis of the statistics of merchandise trade between Brazil and the United States reveals extensive underpricing of exports and overpricing of imports, which has the effect of transferring large amounts of money out of Brazil and into the United States. Previous studies called attention to this possibility without being able to demonstrate convincingly the extent and amount of the practice. This paper reports the results of a systematic investigation of U.S. customs data at its most disaggregate level to document the amount of capital flows which may be hidden in commodity trade. Using deviations from average prices within commodity classes to identify abnormal prices produces conservative estimates of the amount of capital flight from Brazil to the United States of between $2 to $4 billion in 1995 alone, which would be between 10%-20% of total commodity trade between the countries in that year. Some suggestions are developed for using the results to more closely monitor international transactions in order to reduce this amount.     

Factors influencing price developments of commodities

Since developing countries are dependent to a large extent on the export of commodities, changes in commodity prices on world markets can have dramatic effects on living standards and on government budgets. The following paper examines the factors behind such changes and discusses the instruments which could be used to influence them.     

The Uruguay Round: Expectations of developing countries

The recovery of world trade in the last few years has not led to an improvement in the situation of the developing countries. Many commodity prices are currently at their lowest level since the 1930s, and protectionism is on the increase. Are the Uruguay Round negotiations likely to bring positive results for the developing countries?     

商品房销售明码标价问题的思考

在商品房销售中推行明码标价,常常遭遇"上有政策、下有对策",个别商品房没有明码标价、部分商品房标价内容不全、有些商品房明码标价不实,并存在商品房标价外搭车收费和标价中的欺诈行为。为此,必须完善商品房明码标价制度、构建商品房价格公开平台、对商品房进行科学核价、加大违法行为的惩戒力度、提高明码标价政策执行力,让商品房销售明码标价政策惠及广大购房者。     

HETEROGENEOUS CAPITAL GOODS AND THE HARROD–BALASSA–SAMUELSON EFFECT

This paper shows that in a world of ‘production of commodities by means of commodities’ there is not an unambiguous relation between the long‐period relative commodity prices and the sectoral total factor productivities. Consequently, the Harrod–Balassa–Samuelson effect is not verified and/or makes no sense.     

An antinomy in the theory of comparative advantage

This paper shows that the usual bilateral rule of comparing relative prices under autarky to determine the pattern of trade is not valid for the multicommodity world. In addition, equilibrium world price ratios need not fall between the corresponding price ranges under autarky. Such a paradox disappears under gross substitutability when the third commodity is a nontradeable. For the case of tradeables, an alternative bilateral rule to determine the pattern of trade is proposed. Since the classical constant cost case has been heavily discussed in the literature, we confine ourselves to the neoclassical case.     

Commodity price stabilization and the developing countries

Discussions on the development problems of commodity producing countries have been dominated by proposals for stabilizing world prices of commodities, in particular via the establishment of a “Common Fund” within the framework of UNCTAD’s Integrated Program for Commodities. Professor Ahmad argues that price instability is, however, merely a symptom of other, underlying problems, and outlines the implications of this for development policy.     

Modeling seasonality in agricultural commodity futures

The stochastic behavior of agricultural commodity prices is investigated using observations of the term structures of futures prices over time. The continuous time dynamics of (log‐) commodity prices are modeled as a sum of a deterministic seasonal component, a non‐stationary state‐variable, and a stationary state‐variable. Futures prices are established by standard no‐arbitrage arguments and the Kalman filter methodology is used to estimate the model parameters for corn futures, soybean futures, and wheat futures based on weekly data from the Chicago Board of Trade for the period 1972–1997. Furthermore, in a discussion of the estimated seasonal patterns in agricultural commodity prices, the paper provides empirical evidence on the theory of storage that predicts a negative relationship between stocks of inventory and convenience yields; in particular, convenience yields used in this analysis are extracted using the Kalman filter. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:393–426, 2002     

Food Prices,Ethics and Forms of Speculation

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper examines the role of speculative motives in the determination of commodity prices and specifically food related commodity prices. The motivation for this...     

Some empirical evidence on commodity arbitrage and the law of one price

This paper draws three conclusions from a regression study of disaggregated commodity arbitrage between the U.S. and Canada: (1) Inability to detect commodity arbitrage characterizes a majority of commodity classes, which can potentially be described as nontradeables. (2) Commodity arbitrage is never perfect. (3) When commodity arbitrage is detected, Canadian prices invariably respond as much or more to the exchange rate as they do to U.S. prices.