IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jimfin/v42y2014icp253-271.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do oil prices drive food prices? The tale of a structural break

Author

Listed:
  • Avalos, Fernando

Abstract

It is frequently argued that biofuel (and ethanol) promotion policies in the United States have created a link between oil and corn prices that has accentuated the recent rally in the price of that crop and its substitutes (especially soybeans). Even though it is intuitively appealing, one problem with this hypothesis is that ethanol policies have been in place in the US for more than 35 years, whereas the run up in food prices dates back only to 2006. However, a significant change in US biofuel policy during that year provides an adequate framework to test for the existence of a structural break in the stochastic properties of the corn and soybean price processes. The results show that structural stability is rejected, and the transmission of oil price innovations to corn prices has become stronger after 2006 (no changes with respect to soybeans). There is also a significant transmission of corn price innovations to oil and soybean prices. Moreover, the data show evidence of a previously non-existent cointegration relationship between oil and corn prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Avalos, Fernando, 2014. "Do oil prices drive food prices? The tale of a structural break," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 253-271.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:42:y:2014:i:c:p:253-271
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jimonfin.2013.08.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261560613001162
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jimonfin.2013.08.014?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thaeripour, Farzad & Tyner, Wallace E., 2007. "Ethanol subsidies, Who gets the benefits?," Biofuels, Food and Feed Tradeoffs Conference, April 12-13, 2007, St, Louis, Missouri 48776, Farm Foundation.
    2. Jeffrey A Frankel & Andrew K Rose, 2010. "Determinants of Agricultural and Mineral Commodity Prices," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Renée Fry & Callum Jones & Christopher Kent (ed.),Inflation in an Era of Relative Price Shocks, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(1 (Spring), pages 215-283.
    4. Candelon, Bertrand & Lutkepohl, Helmut, 2001. "On the reliability of Chow-type tests for parameter constancy in multivariate dynamic models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 155-160, November.
    5. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 2008. "The Effect of Monetary Policy on Real Commodity Prices," NBER Chapters, in: Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, pages 291-333, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Bénédicte Vidaillet & V. d'Estaintot & P. Abécassis, 2005. "Introduction," Post-Print hal-00287137, HAL.
    7. Leandro Medina, 2010. "The Dynamic Effects of Commodity Prices on Fiscal Performance in Latin America," IMF Working Papers 2010/192, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Pesaran, H. Hashem & Shin, Yongcheol, 1998. "Generalized impulse response analysis in linear multivariate models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 17-29, January.
    9. Bruce A. Babcock, 2012. "Updated Assessment of the Drought's Impacts on Crop Prices and Biofuel Production," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 12-pb8, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    10. Céspedes, Luis Felipe & Velasco, Andrés, 2014. "Was this time different?: Fiscal policy in commodity republics," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 92-106.
    11. Medina, Leandro, 2010. "A Commodity Curse? The Dynamic Effects of Commodity Prices on Fiscal Performance in Latin America," MPRA Paper 21690, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Stephen G Cecchetti & Richhild Moessner, 2008. "Commodity prices and inflation dynamics," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    13. Wallace E. Tyner & Farzad Taheripour, 2008. "Policy Options for Integrated Energy and Agricultural Markets," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 30(3), pages 387-396.
    14. Zibin Zhang & Luanne Lohr & Cesar Escalante & Michael Wetzstein, 2009. "Ethanol, Corn, and Soybean Price Relations in a Volatile Vehicle-Fuels Market," Energies, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-20, June.
    15. Dietrich Domanski & Alexandra Heath, 2007. "Financial investors and commodity markets," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    16. Taheripour, Farzad & Tyner, Wallace E., 2007. "Ethanol Subsidies, Who Gets the Benefits?," Biofuels, Food and Feed Tradeoffs Conference, April 12-13, 2007, St, Louis, Missouri 313702, Farm Foundation.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Fernando Avalos & Marco Jacopo Lombardi, 2015. "The biofuel connection: impact of US regulation on oil and food prices," BIS Working Papers 487, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Śmiech, Sławomir & Papież, Monika & Dąbrowski, Marek A., 2015. "Does the euro area macroeconomy affect global commodity prices? Evidence from a SVAR approach," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 485-503.
    3. Ratti, Ronald A. & Vespignani, Joaquin L., 2014. "Oil prices and the economy: A global perspective," MPRA Paper 59407, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Ratti, Ronald A. & Vespignani, Joaquin L., 2013. "Liquidity and crude oil prices: China's influence over 1996–2011," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 517-525.
    5. Bakas, Dimitrios & Triantafyllou, Athanasios, 2018. "The impact of uncertainty shocks on the volatility of commodity prices," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 96-111.
    6. Ratti, Ronald A. & Vespignani, Joaquin L., 2013. "Crude oil prices and liquidity, the BRIC and G3 countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 28-38.
    7. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2022. "Oil prices, exchange rates and interest rates," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    8. Reicher Christopher Phillip & Utlaut Johannes Friederich, 2013. "Monetary policy shocks and real commodity prices," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-35, October.
    9. Considine, Jennifer & Hatipoglu, Emre & Aldayel, Abdullah, 2022. "The sensitivity of oil price shocks to preexisting market conditions: A GVAR analysis," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    10. Lopez-Martin, Bernabe & Leal, Julio & Martinez Fritscher, Andre, 2019. "Commodity price risk management and fiscal policy in a sovereign default model," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 304-323.
    11. Yao, Wei & Alexiou, Constantinos, 2022. "Exploring the transmission mechanism of speculative and inventory arbitrage activity to commodity price volatility. Novel evidence for the US economy," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    12. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 2014. "Effects of speculation and interest rates in a “carry trade” model of commodity prices," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 88-112.
    13. Ratti, Ronald A. & Vespignani, Joaquin L., 2016. "Oil prices and global factor macroeconomic variables," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 198-212.
    14. Condon, Nicole & Klemick, Heather & Wolverton, Ann, 2015. "Impacts of ethanol policy on corn prices: A review and meta-analysis of recent evidence," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 63-73.
    15. Rodrigo Valdes & Roberto Jara‐Rojas, 2020. "The impact of commodity price shocks among regional economies of a developing country," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 64(3), pages 920-939, July.
    16. Makhlouf, Yousef & Kellard, Neil M. & Vinogradov, Dmitri, 2017. "Child mortality, commodity price volatility and the resource curse," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 144-156.
    17. Klotz, Philipp & Lin, Tsoyu Calvin & Hsu, Shih-Hsun, 2014. "Global commodity prices, economic activity and monetary policy: The relevance of China," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1-9.
    18. Mensi, Walid & Tiwari, Aviral & Bouri, Elie & Roubaud, David & Al-Yahyaee, Khamis H., 2017. "The dependence structure across oil, wheat, and corn: A wavelet-based copula approach using implied volatility indexes," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 122-139.
    19. Elmarzougui, Eskandar & Larue, Bruno, 2011. "On the Evolving Relationship between Corn and Oil Prices," Working Papers 118580, University of Laval, Center for Research on the Economics of the Environment, Agri-food, Transports and Energy (CREATE).
    20. Tyner, Wallace E. & Taheripour, Farzad & Perkis, David, 2010. "Comparison of fixed versus variable biofuels incentives," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5530-5540, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Oil price; Food price; Corn price; Soybean price; Ethanol; Biofuel;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q16 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - R&D; Agricultural Technology; Biofuels; Agricultural Extension Services
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy

    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:eee:jimfin:v:42:y:2014:i:c:p:253-271. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30443 .

    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.