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, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 44(3), pages 1-26, August.
    2. Working, Holbrook, 1960. "Speculation on Hedging Markets," Food Research Institute Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 1(2), pages 1-36.
    3. Baffes, John & Haniotis, Tassos, 2010. "Placing the 2006/08 commodity price boom into perspective," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5371, The World Bank.
    4. Girardi, Daniele, 2012. "Do financial investors affect the price of wheat?," MPRA Paper 40285, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Daniele Girardi, 2012. "Do financial investors affect the price of wheat?," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 65(260), pages 79-109.
    6. Helyette Geman, 2005. "Commodities and Commodity Derivatives. Modeling and Pricing for Agriculturals, Metals and Energy," Post-Print halshs-00144182, HAL.
    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, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(2), pages 377-391, August.
    8. 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.
    9. 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.
    10. Dietrich Domanski & Alexandra Heath, 2007. "Financial investors and commodity markets," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    11. 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(01), pages 1-12.
    12. 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.
    13. repec:dau:papers:123456789/607 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Mitchell, Donald, 2008. "A note on rising food prices," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4682, The World Bank.
    15. Michał Falkowski, 2011. "Financialization of commodities," Contemporary Economics, Vizja University, 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. Yao, Wei, 2025. "The US Quantitative Easing Monetary Policy and Commodities’ Prices," Other publications TiSEM 185d14d3-9dc2-4276-82ec-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Yao, Wei & Alexiou, Constantinos, 2024. "On the transmission mechanism between the inventory arbitrage activity, speculative activity and the commodity price under the US QE policy: Evidence from a TVP-VAR model," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 1054-1072.
    6. 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.
    7. Etienne, Xiaoli L., 2015. "Financialization of Agricultural Commodity Markets: Do Financial Data Help to Forecast Agricultural Prices?," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205124, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    8. 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.
    9. Abid, Ilyes & Goutte, Stéphane & Guesmi, Khaled & Jamali, Ibrahim, 2019. "Transmission of shocks and contagion from U.S. to MENA equity markets: The role of oil and gas markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    10. 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.
    11. Go, You-How & Lau, Wee-Yeap, 2017. "Investor demand, market efficiency and spot-futures relation: Further evidence from crude palm oil," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 135-146.
    12. Karol Szafranek, 2015. "Financialisation of the commodity markets. Conclusions from the VARX DCC GARCH," EcoMod2015 8554, EcoMod.
    13. Fan, John Hua & Mo, Di & Zhang, Tingxi, 2022. "The “necessary evil” in Chinese commodity markets," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 25(C).
    14. Aiube, Fernando Antonio Lucena & Faquieri, Winicius Botelho, 2019. "Can Gaussian factor models of commodity prices capture the financialization phenomenon?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    15. Adam Zaremba, 2015. "Inflation, Business Cycles, and Commodity Investing in Financialized Markets," Business and Economics Research Journal, Bursa Uludag University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. 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.
    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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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.