Do Commodity Index Traders Destabilize Agricultural Futures Prices?

• Motivated by repeated price spikes and crashes over the last decade, we investigate whether the intensive investment activities of commodity index traders (CITs) have destabilized agricultural futures markets. Using a stochastic volatility model, we treat conditional volatility as an unobserved component, and analyze whether it has been affected by the expected and unexpected open interest of CITs. However, with respect to twelve increasingly financialized grain, livestock, and soft commodities, we do not find robust evidence that this is the case. We thus conclude that justifying a tighter regulation of CITs by blaming them for more volatile agricultural futures markets appears to be unwarranted.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Matematik -- Sannolikhetsteori och statistik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Mathematics -- Probability Theory and Statistics (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Företagsekonomi

Business Studies

Statistics

Statistik

Commodity Index Traders

Futures Prices

Agricultural Markets

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)