Is the EU Deforestation Regulation affecting the price of the regulated commodities?

Adopted in June 2023, the European Union Regulation on Deforestation-free products (EUDR) aims at reducing global deforestation by creating a traceability system that should prevent products that have caused deforestation to be placed on, or exported from, the European market. The price increase of several commodities covered by the EUDR in the last few years has raised the concern that this could have been caused by the same regulation, due to increased production or compliance costs or market operator behaviour, even before the effective application of the EUDR. The present study tries to assess this hypothesis using descriptive statistics and data visualization. Several elements seem to indicate a distinctive pattern in the price increase of the commodities covered by the EUDR after 2023, but an imbalance between demand and supply for many of such commodities strongly undermines the argument of a causal effect of the regulation. Indeed, considering this imbalance, it appears that the observed price spikes for some EUDR-regulated commodities may have coincided with the entrance into force of the EUDR by chance, rather than being a direct consequence of the regulation.