Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos?

The prices of 27 internationally traded commodities are decomposed into transitory and permanent shocks by applying an ideal band-pass filter to monthly data from 1970–2020. The two types of shocks contributed roughly equally to price variations, b...

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Main Authors: Baffes, John, Kabundi, Alain
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/693261633374058029/Commodity-Price-Shocks-Order-within-Chaos
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36343
id okr-10986-36343
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-363432021-10-13T05:10:42Z Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos? Baffes, John Kabundi, Alain COMMODITY PRICES COMMODITY SHOCK ENERGY FERTILIZER METAL PRICES PRICE CYCLE PRICE TREND AGRICULTURE The prices of 27 internationally traded commodities are decomposed into transitory and permanent shocks by applying an ideal band-pass filter to monthly data from 1970–2020. The two types of shocks contributed roughly equally to price variations, but with wide heterogeneity. Permanent shocks ac-counted for two-thirds of the variability in agricultural prices but less than 30 percent in energy prices. The transitory shock component revealed three medium-term cycles. The first (from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s) and third (from the early 2000s to 2020 onward) exhibit similar duration and involve almost all commodities, while the second (spanning the 1990s) is mostly applicable to metals, with the notable absence of energy. The permanent shock components differ across commodities, with an up-ward trend for most industrial commodities and downward trend for agriculture. Moreover, the permanent component of commodity prices where investment is irreversible, including energy, metals, and tree crops, exhibits a high degree of nonlinearities, which also coincide with the two post–World War II supercycles. By contrast, the permanent component of annual agricultural prices is linear, reflecting greater flexibility in investment allocation and input use of these commodities. Prices of commodities subjected to widespread policy interventions, such as international commodity agreements, exhibit persistent deviations from linear trends. 2021-10-12T17:23:43Z 2021-10-12T17:23:43Z 2021-10 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/693261633374058029/Commodity-Price-Shocks-Order-within-Chaos http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36343 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9792 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic COMMODITY PRICES
COMMODITY SHOCK
ENERGY
FERTILIZER
METAL PRICES
PRICE CYCLE
PRICE TREND
AGRICULTURE
spellingShingle COMMODITY PRICES
COMMODITY SHOCK
ENERGY
FERTILIZER
METAL PRICES
PRICE CYCLE
PRICE TREND
AGRICULTURE
Baffes, John
Kabundi, Alain
Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos?
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9792
description The prices of 27 internationally traded commodities are decomposed into transitory and permanent shocks by applying an ideal band-pass filter to monthly data from 1970–2020. The two types of shocks contributed roughly equally to price variations, but with wide heterogeneity. Permanent shocks ac-counted for two-thirds of the variability in agricultural prices but less than 30 percent in energy prices. The transitory shock component revealed three medium-term cycles. The first (from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s) and third (from the early 2000s to 2020 onward) exhibit similar duration and involve almost all commodities, while the second (spanning the 1990s) is mostly applicable to metals, with the notable absence of energy. The permanent shock components differ across commodities, with an up-ward trend for most industrial commodities and downward trend for agriculture. Moreover, the permanent component of commodity prices where investment is irreversible, including energy, metals, and tree crops, exhibits a high degree of nonlinearities, which also coincide with the two post–World War II supercycles. By contrast, the permanent component of annual agricultural prices is linear, reflecting greater flexibility in investment allocation and input use of these commodities. Prices of commodities subjected to widespread policy interventions, such as international commodity agreements, exhibit persistent deviations from linear trends.
format Working Paper
author Baffes, John
Kabundi, Alain
author_facet Baffes, John
Kabundi, Alain
author_sort Baffes, John
title Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos?
title_short Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos?
title_full Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos?
title_fullStr Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos?
title_full_unstemmed Commodity Price Shocks : Order within Chaos?
title_sort commodity price shocks : order within chaos?
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2021
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/693261633374058029/Commodity-Price-Shocks-Order-within-Chaos
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36343
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