In 2007 and 2008 world food markets observed a significant price boom. Crop failures simultaneously occurring in some of the world’s major production regions have been quoted as one factor among others for the price boom. Against this background, we analyse the stochasticity of crop yields in...

Purpose – The authors' paper aims to deal with the question whether speculative bubbles are present in agricultural commodity prices. Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply a regime switching regression model to test the hypothesis that agricultural prices contain periodically...

This paper investigates the impact of speculation on prices of agricultural commodities. Recently, non-commercial traders are responsible for price peaks and increased volatility on agricultural markets. As a matter of fact, speculation with commodity futures has increased over the last decade....

In 2007 and 2008 world food markets observed a significant price boom. Crop failures simultaneously occurring in some of the world's major production regions have been quoted as one factor among others for the price boom. Against this background, we analyse the stochasticity of crop yields in...

Der Beitrag untersucht den Einfluss von Spekulation mit Terminkontrakten auf die Preise von Agrarrohstoffen. Konkret wird der öffentlich diskutierte Vorwurf aufgegriffen, Spekulation sei für den Preisanstieg und die Preisschwankungen auf Agrarmärkten mit verantwortlich und trage so zur...

The sharp increase in agricultural commodity prices in 2008 and in 2011 has triggered an intensive debate on the causes for these price booms. Speculative bubbles have been quoted as one factor among others for the price peaks. Against this background, our paper contributes to this discussion by...

In 2007 and 2008 world food markets observed a significant price boom. Crop failures simultaneously occurring in some of the world's major production regions have been quoted as one factor among others for the price boom. Against this background, we analyse the stochasticity of crop yields in...