Many believe that index fund investment was the main driver of the 2007-2008 spike in commodity futures prices. One group of empirical studies finds evidence that commodity index investment directly or indirectly had a substantial impact on commodity futures prices. However, the data and methods...

This paper investigates the relationship between futures prices and financial investments in derivatives of the main agricultural commodities. We first provide a broad picture of how these markets function and how they have evolved, showing that traders who deal mostly in commodity index...

This literature survey comprises 35 empirical studies published between 2010 and 2012 that analyze the influence of financial speculation on the markets for agricultural commodities. According to the current state of research, there is little supporting evidence that the recent increase in...

For quite some time long-only index funds have been suspected of being responsible for price increases in agricultural futures markets. This suspicion has prompted demands to drastically limit long-only index fundsʼ scope of activity. Such demands and their underlying diagnoses, however,...

Dieser Literaturüberblick wertet 35 Forschungsarbeiten aus, die zwischen 2010 und 2012 veröffentlicht wurden und den Einfluss der Finanzspekulation auf die Agrarroh-stoffmärkte empirisch untersuchen: Gemäß aktuellem Erkenntnisstand spricht wenig für die Auffassung, dass die Zunahme der...

This literature survey comprises 35 empirical studies published between 2010 and 2012 that analyze the influence of financial speculation on the markets for agricultural com-modities. According to the current state of research, there is little supporting evidence that the recent increase in...

This short essay on financial speculation with agricultural commodities offers (1) a survey of the real economy factors that caused recent hunger crises, (2) an overview of academic research on the impact of index-based financial speculation on agricultural futures markets, and (3) a discussion...

Several studies employ mapping algorithms to infer index positions in WTI crude oil futures from positions in agricultural futures and report an economically large and statistically significant impact of index positions on crude oil futures prices. In this article, we provide direct evidence...