Market Power and Primary Commodity Prices: The Case of Copper

This paper identifies the economic fundamentals of the evolution of copper price. The main hypotheses of the paper is that cooper price is mainly determined by the evolution of demand of countries with large market power on that market. The novelty is that nominal exchange rate are one of the fundamental of market power. We use monthly data ranging from 1994 to 2003 and by means of a cointegration analysis; we find the Asian block significantly affects the price of this tradable good.