For many academics, students, and professionals, the field of commodities is a black box. This book explores commodities in a holistic manner, presenting concepts from a multidisciplinary business and financial perspective, and offering a panoramic view of the global commodity business and...

Presumed portfolio benefits of commodities and the availability of index fund-type investment products increase attractiveness of commodity markets for financial traders. But resulting “index trading” strategies are suspected to inflate commodity prices above their fundamental value. We use...

Modern agricultural commodity markets are simultaneously governed by a physical and a financial market element. Whether financial “index trading” activity influences price levels on the futures markets has been investigated by empirical studies using Granger Causality Analysis. A critical...

We extend Kilian's (2009) framework to identify an exogenous shock arising from changes in financial market conditions and examine the consequent macroeconomic impacts of oil price changes. We find that a financial shock is a key determinant of oil prices and its macroeconomic impact is as...