In the wake of the commodity boom and bust, a number of articles and reports have made the case that the surge in commodity prices and the subsequent fall were caused by speculation, particularly by index funds. This claim is reviewed and an overview of the arguments is presented. By way of...

Tilton et al. claim in their article “Investor demand and spot commodity prices” to show that “investor demand can be pushing up a commodity's price even when investor stocks are falling.” In the present comment, it is argued that in both the cases described by Tilton et al., investors...