Coffee price volatility was extreme in 1997. With no obvious drought or freezing conditions in major growing countries, market analysts blamed El Nino. Alternatively, economic theory implies that commodity price volatility should be high when inventories are low. We analyze and test these two...

Agricultural prices are determined by natural and socio-economic factors that are known to be self-similar at different time scales and to follow non-periodic cyclical patterns. These properties are most easily understood using Mandelbrot's fractal geometry, in which a jagged time series is...

Many studies have addressed the issues of the price relationships between spatially separated commodity markets. Such studies, which have policy relevance, provide information on the structure and the performance of the markets. Most of these studies, however, have been criticized for not...