We trace Japanese corporate investment across different types of firms over the past decades and estimate the main determinants of investment. We find that there are differences in investment behavior between firms expanding abroad and those operating mainly in domestic markets. On the back of a...

Declining commodity prices during mid-2014-2016 posed significant challenges to commodity-exporting economies. The severe terms of trade shock associated with a sharp fall in world commodity prices have raised anew questions about the viability of pegged exchange rate regimes. More recently, the...

This paper presents a comprehensive database of country-specific commodity price indices for 182 economies covering the period 1962-2018. For each country, the change in the international price of up to 45 individual commodities is weighted using commodity-level trade data. The database includes...

The paper uses an event study methodology to investigate which and how macroeconomic announcements affect commodity prices. Results show that gold is unique among commodities, with prices reacting to specific scheduled announcements in the United States and the Euro area (such as indicators of...

This paper examines the behavior of crude oil prices since 1980, and in particular the volatility of these prices. The empirical analysis covers “spot” prices for one of the key internationally traded crudes, namely Dated Brent Blend. A GARCH (generalized autoregressive conditional...

This paper presents a neoclassical model that explains the observed empirical relationship between government spending and world commodity supplies and the real exchange rate and real commodity prices. It is shown that fiscal expansion and increasing world commodity supplies simultaneously lead...

Primary commodities still account for the bulk of exports in many developing countries. However, real commodity prices have been declining almost continuously since the early 1980s and there is evidence of renewed weakness. The appropriate policy response to a terms of trade shock depends...

Shocks to aggregate activity in China have a significant and persistent short-run impact on the price of oil and some base metals. In contrast, shocks to apparent commodity-specific consumption (in part reflecting inventory demand) have no effect on commodity prices. China’s impact on world...