The addition of commodities to financial portfolios and resulting weight adjustments may create volatility linkages between commodity and financial markets, especially during financial crises. Also, biofuel mandates are suspected to integrate agricultural and energy markets. We calculate...

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...

The increased interest in Integrated Assessment (IA) of agricultural systems reflects the growing complexity of policy objectives and corresponding impacts related to this sector. The paper contemplates on the status of quantitative tools for IA in agriculture, drawing on recent European...

This paper gives an overview on current and prospective modelling challenges for agricultural partial equilibrium (PE) models focussing on EU policies. Starting from a certain policy context, the paper highlights the current capabilities and limitations of existing PE models and, if available,...

In this poster a Bayesian estimation framework for a non-stationary Markov model is developed for situations where sample data with observed transition between classes (micro data) and aggregate population shares (macro data) are available. Posterior distributions on transition probabilities are...

This paper reviews and discusses the more recent literature and application of Positive Mathematical Programming in the context of agricultural supply models. Specifically, advances in the empirical foundation of parameter specifications as well as the economic rationalisation of PMP models...

Policy makers have to choose between different potentially risk-reducing instruments regulating agri-food trade. Analysing the meat sector, the paper aims at identifying least trade distorting regulations for different policy goals relevant to the SPS agreement. For this purpose, a non-linear...

Revised version of paper added to AgEcon Search 03/02/2010