Commodity prices may be a leading indicator of inflation, because of the relative importance of flexible auction markets for the determination of these prices. Empirical tests using data for the large industrial countries as a group suggest that changes in commodity prices tend to lead those in...

This paper describes the primary framework associating the four principal price indices in the system of economic statistics—the Producer Price Index (PPI), the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and the Export and Import Price Indices (XPI and MPI)—with the macroeconomic value aggregates they...

This paper investigates the relationship between the nominal exchange rate regime and the volatility of relative commodity prices. The analysis shows that the relationship depends upon both the market structure and the economic agent’s perception about future exchange rate movements. When the...

This paper examines the historical effects of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle on world prices and economic activity. The analysis indicates that ENSO has economically-important and statistically-significant effects on world real commodity prices. A one-standard-deviation positive...

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...

How does a commodity market adjust to a temporary scarcity shock which causes a shift in the slope of the futures price curve? We find long-run relationships between spot and futures prices, inventories and interest rates, which means that such shocks lead to an adjustment back towards a stable...

This paper examines the effect that windfalls from international commodity price booms have on net foreign assets in a panel of 145 countries during the period 1970-2007. The main finding is that windfalls from international commodity price booms lead to a significant increase in net foreign...

The role of the international commodity market in transmitting disturbances is considered in a model that incorporates commodities as an input in production. The analysis employs a three-country framework: a liquidity-constrained commodity supplier and two industrial countries that import the...

The “traditional structural approach” to the determination of real commodity prices has relied exclusively on demand factors as the fundamentals that explain the behavior of commodity prices. This framework, however, has been unable to explain the marked and sustained weakness in commodity...