IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/polpwa/190771.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Speculation in the agricultural commodity market

Author

Listed:
  • Czech, Katarzyna

Abstract

This paper studies the role of speculators in explaining agricultural commodity price movements. The spikes in global agricultural commodity prices in 2007-2008 and 2010 2011 have opened a debate on the contribution of speculation to recent food price volatility. Most academic literature does not support the idea that speculators drive commodity prices beyond fundamental levels. There are, however, some researchers who do find empirical evidence supporting the idea that the activity of speculators affects commodity prices. This paper concludes that the activity of speculators may temporarily overprice or underprice commodity values. It is assumed, however, that both fundamental and financial factors influence commodity prices. Nevertheless, it is difficult to indicate the extent to which each factor separately affects prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Czech, Katarzyna, 2013. "Speculation in the agricultural commodity market," Problems of World Agriculture / Problemy Rolnictwa Światowego, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, vol. 13(28), pages 1-8, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:polpwa:190771
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.190771
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/190771/files/2013_4_2.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.190771?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Irwin, Scott H. & Sanders, Dwight R., 2012. "Financialization and Structural Change in Commodity Futures Markets," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 371-396, August.
    2. Daniele Girardi, 2012. "Do financial investors affect the price of wheat?," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 65(260), pages 79-109.
    3. Dietrich Domanski & Alexandra Heath, 2007. "Financial investors and commodity markets," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    4. Zawojska, Aldona, 2011. "Czy spekulacje finansowe wpływają na międzynarodowe ceny towarów rolno-żywnościowych?," Problems of World Agriculture / Problemy Rolnictwa Światowego, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, vol. 11(26), pages 1-16, March.
    5. Working, Holbrook, 1960. "Speculation on Hedging Markets," Food Research Institute Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 1(2), pages 1-36.
    6. Baffes, John & Haniotis, Tassos, 2010. "Placing the 2006/08 commodity price boom into perspective," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5371, The World Bank.
    7. Irwin, Scott H. & Sanders, Dwight R. & Merrin, Robert P., 2009. "Devil or Angel? The Role of Speculation in the Recent Commodity Price Boom (and Bust)," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 41(2), August.
    8. Girardi, Daniele, 2012. "Do financial investors affect the price of wheat?," MPRA Paper 40285, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Scott H. Irwin & Dwight R. Sanders, 2011. "Index Funds, Financialization, and Commodity Futures Markets," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 33(1), pages 1-31.
    10. Cardwell, Ryan T. & Barichello, Richard R., 2009. "High Food Prices and Developing Countries: Policy Responses at Home and Abroad," Commissioned Papers 54970, Canadian Agricultural Trade Policy Research Network.
    11. Mitchell, Donald, 2008. "A note on rising food prices," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4682, The World Bank.
    12. Helyette Geman, 2005. "Commodities and Commodity Derivatives. Modeling and Pricing for Agriculturals, Metals and Energy," Post-Print halshs-00144182, HAL.
    13. Petzel, Todd E., 1981. "A New Look at Some Old Evidence: The Wheat Market Scandal of 1925," Food Research Institute Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 18(1), pages 1-12.
    14. repec:dau:papers:123456789/607 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Michał Falkowski, 2011. "Financialization of commodities," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 5(4), December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Czech, Katarzyna, 2016. "Structural Changes in Wheat Market," Problems of World Agriculture / Problemy Rolnictwa Światowego, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, vol. 16(31), pages 1-7, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boyd, Naomi E. & Harris, Jeffrey H. & Li, Bingxin, 2018. "An update on speculation and financialization in commodity markets," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 10(C), pages 91-104.
    2. Marco Haase & Yvonne Seiler Zimmermann & Heinz Zimmermann, 2019. "Permanent and transitory price shocks in commodity futures markets and their relation to speculation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1359-1382, April.
    3. Scott H. Irwin & Dwight R. Sanders, 2011. "Index Funds, Financialization, and Commodity Futures Markets," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 33(1), pages 1-31.
    4. Singh, Jitendra & Ahmad, Wasim & Mishra, Anil, 2019. "Coherence, connectedness and dynamic hedging effectiveness between emerging markets equities and commodity index funds," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 441-460.
    5. Zaremba, Adam, 2015. "Inflation, Business Cycles, and Commodity Investing in Financialized Markets," Business and Economics Research Journal, Uludag University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, January.
    6. Gbadebo Oladosu & Siwa Msangi, 2013. "Biofuel-Food Market Interactions: A Review of Modeling Approaches and Findings," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 3(1), pages 1-19, February.
    7. Ludwig, Michael, 2019. "Speculation and its impact on liquidity in commodity markets," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 532-547.
    8. Zaremba, Adam, 2016. "Strategies Based on Momentum and Term Structure in Financialized Commodity Markets," Business and Economics Research Journal, Uludag University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, vol. 7(1), pages 31-46, January.
    9. Lang, Korbinian & Auer, Benjamin R., 2020. "The economic and financial properties of crude oil: A review," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    10. Troester, Bernhard & Staritz, Cornelia, 2013. "Fundamentals or financialisation of commodity markets: What determines recent wheat prices?," Working Papers 43, Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE).
    11. Ederington, Louis H. & Fernando, Chitru S. & Hoelscher, Seth A. & Lee, Thomas K. & Linn, Scott C., 2019. "Characteristics of petroleum product prices: A survey," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 1-15.
    12. Miffre, Joëlle & Brooks, Chris, 2013. "Do long-short speculators destabilize commodity futures markets?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 230-240.
    13. Moses M. Kupabado & Juergen Kaehler, 2021. "Financialization, common stochastic trends, and commodity prices," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(12), pages 1988-2008, December.
    14. Oliver Borgards & Robert L. Czudaj, 2023. "Long‐short speculator sentiment in agricultural commodity markets," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 3511-3528, October.
    15. Vijay Kumar Varadi, 2012. "An evidence of speculation in Indian commodity markets," EconStor Preprints 57430, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    16. Bohl, Martin T. & Siklos, Pierre L. & Stefan, Martin & Wellenreuther, Claudia, 2020. "Price discovery in agricultural commodity markets: Do speculators contribute?," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    17. Yin, Libo & Zhou, Yimin, 2016. "What drives long-term oil market volatility? Fundamentals versus speculation," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 10, pages 1-26.
    18. Etienne, Xiaoli, 2015. "Financialization of Agricultural Commodity Markets: Do Financial Data Help to Forecast Agricultural Prices," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211626, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. Philip Abbott, 2014. "Biofuels, Binding Constraints, and Agricultural Commodity Price Volatility," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 91-131, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Adam Zaremba, 2015. "Portfolio Diversification with Commodities in Times of Financialization," International Journal of Finance & Banking Studies, Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 4(1), pages 18-36, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:polpwa:190771. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wesggpl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.