IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/128022.html

Use-Specific Storage Premia and Market Stabilization for Critical Minerals in the Presence of Geopolitical Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Saadaoui, Jamel
  • Smyth, Russell
  • Vespignani, Joaquin L.
  • Wang, Yitian

Abstract

This paper examines how geopolitical risk affects metal prices and stockpiling when demand is unevenly distributed across end uses. We develop a Theory of Use-Specific Storage Premia, which posits that demand concentration and limited redeployability raise effective storage costs and weaken the stabilizing role of inventories/stockpiling. Using deterioration in United States–China political relations as a shock to forward-looking demand expectations, we estimate price and inventory responses for metals with well-established markets. Broad-use metals exhibit significant price declines and precautionary stockpiling following geopolitical deterioration, while use-specific metals display muted responses. Cross-sectional evidence links these patterns directly to use-specificity. The results imply that traditional stockpiling is structurally less effective for battery-linked critical minerals subject to geopolitical risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Saadaoui, Jamel & Smyth, Russell & Vespignani, Joaquin L. & Wang, Yitian, 2026. "Use-Specific Storage Premia and Market Stabilization for Critical Minerals in the Presence of Geopolitical Risk," MPRA Paper 128022, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:128022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/128022/1/MPRA_paper_128022.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dario Caldara & Matteo Iacoviello, 2022. "Measuring Geopolitical Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(4), pages 1194-1225, April.
    2. Joaquin Vespignani & Russell Smyth, 2024. "Artificial intelligence investments reduce risks to critical mineral supply," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Deaton, Angus & Laroque, Guy, 1996. "Competitive Storage and Commodity Price Dynamics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 896-923, October.
    4. Nicholas Kaldor, 1939. "Speculation and Economic Stability," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 7(1), pages 1-27.
    5. Gary B. Gorton & Fumio Hayashi & K. Geert Rouwenhorst, 2013. "The Fundamentals of Commodity Futures Returns," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(1), pages 35-105.
    6. Saadaoui, Jamel & Smyth, Russell & Vespignani, Joaquin, 2025. "Ensuring the security of the clean energy transition: Examining the impact of geopolitical risk on the price of critical minerals," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    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. Robert J. R. Eliott & Gavin D. J. Harper & Viet Nguyen-Tien, 2026. "The economics of the electric vehicle transition: demand, supply chains, and innovation," CEP Discussion Papers dp2164, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    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. Guo, Kevin & Leung, Tim, 2017. "Understanding the non-convergence of agricultural futures via stochastic storage costs and timing options," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 6(C), pages 32-49.
    2. Kang, Wilson & Smyth, Russell & Vespignani, Joaquin, 2025. "The Macroeconomic Fragility of Critical Mineral Markets," Working Papers 2025-01, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics.
    3. Francisco Arroyo Marioli, 2020. "Old crop versus new crop prices: Explaining the correlation," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(7), pages 1192-1208, July.
    4. Liu, Peng & Tang, Ke, 2011. "The stochastic behavior of commodity prices with heteroskedasticity in the convenience yield," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 211-224, March.
    5. Ing-Haw Cheng & Wei Xiong, 2014. "Financialization of Commodity Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 419-441, December.
    6. Joaquin Vespignani & Russell Smyth & Jamel Saadaoui, 2025. "Strategic Stockpiling Reduces the Geopolitical Risk to the Supply Chain of Copper and Lithium," CAMA Working Papers 2025-42, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    7. Liu, Peng (Peter) & Tang, Ke, 2010. "No-arbitrage conditions for storable commodities and the modeling of futures term structures," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(7), pages 1675-1687, July.
    8. Colin A. Carter & Gordon C. Rausser & Aaron Smith, 2011. "Commodity Booms and Busts," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 87-118, October.
    9. Secomandi, Nicola & Seppi, Duane J., 2014. "Real Options and Merchant Operations of Energy and Other Commodities," Foundations and Trends(R) in Technology, Information and Operations Management, now publishers, vol. 6(3-4), pages 161-331, July.
    10. Guillermo Llorente & Jiang Wang, 2020. "Trading and information in futures markets," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(8), pages 1231-1263, August.
    11. Kang, Wenjin & Tang, Ke & Wang, Ningli, 2023. "Financialization of commodity markets ten years later," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    12. Ames, Matthew & Bagnarosa, Guillaume & Matsui, Tomoko & Peters, Gareth W. & Shevchenko, Pavel V., 2020. "Which risk factors drive oil futures price curves?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    13. Gao, Lin & Hitzemann, Steffen & Shaliastovich, Ivan & Xu, Lai, 2022. "Oil volatility risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 456-491.
    14. Rad, Hossein & Low, Rand Kwong Yew & Miffre, Joëlle & Faff, Robert, 2023. "The commodity risk premium and neural networks," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    15. CARPANTIER, Jean - François, 2010. "Commodities inventory effect," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2010040, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    16. Zaremba, Adam & Bianchi, Robert J. & Mikutowski, Mateusz, 2021. "Long-run reversal in commodity returns: Insights from seven centuries of evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    17. Jia, Yiqing & Liu, Yang & Taghizadeh-Hesary, Farhad, 2025. "The nexus among geopolitical risk, metal prices, and global supply chain pressure: Evidence from the TVP-SV-VAR approach," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 1776-1789.
    18. Koch, Nicolas, 2014. "Tail events: A new approach to understanding extreme energy commodity prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 195-205.
    19. Nicolas Legrand, 2019. "The Empirical Merit Of Structural Explanations Of Commodity Price Volatility: Review And Perspectives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 639-664, April.
    20. Rad, Hossein & Low, Rand Kwong Yew & Miffre, Joëlle & Faff, Robert, 2020. "Does sophistication of the weighting scheme enhance the performance of long-short commodity portfolios?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 164-180.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F52 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - National Security; Economic Nationalism
    • Q31 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:128022. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.