Commodity Trade and Finance


Book Description

What affects the supply of oil? How important is the weather in determining grain prices? Why has the price of copper skyrocketed? This unique book analyses the economics of key commodity groups, including energy, agriculture and metals. It examines the supply/demand fundamentals of several major and minor commodities, physical characteristics, production and consumption patterns, trade flows and pricing mechanisms. It also explains the main tools used to hedge price risk, such as futures, options and swaps. This second edition has been fully revised and restructured, and contains four new chapters, including oil refining, electricity and price risk management for energy, metals and agricultural commodities This book is an indispensable reference text for students, academics and those working in the commodity business.




Commodity Prices and Markets


Book Description

Fluctuations of commodity prices, most notably of oil, capture considerable attention and have been tied to important economic effects. This book advances our understanding of the consequences of these fluctuations, providing both general analysis and a particular focus on the countries of the Pacific Rim.




Handbook of Multi-Commodity Markets and Products


Book Description

Handbook of Multi-Commodity Markets and ProductsOver recent decades, the marketplace has seen an increasing integration, not only among different types of commodity markets such as energy, agricultural, and metals, but also with financial markets. This trend raises important questions about how to identify and analyse opportunities in and manage risks of commodity products. The Handbook of Multi-Commodity Markets and Products offers traders, commodity brokers, and other professionals a practical and comprehensive manual that covers market structure and functioning, as well as the practice of trading across a wide range of commodity markets and products. Written in non-technical language, this important resource includes the information needed to begin to master the complexities of and to operate successfully in today’s challenging and fluctuating commodity marketplace. Designed as a practical practitioner-orientated resource, the book includes a detailed overview of key markets – oil, coal, electricity, emissions, weather, industrial metals, freight, agricultural and foreign exchange – and contains a set of tools for analysing, pricing and managing risk for the individual markets. Market features and the main functioning rules of the markets in question are presented, along with the structure of basic financial products and standardised deals. A range of vital topics such as stochastic and econometric modelling, market structure analysis, contract engineering, as well as risk assessment and management are presented and discussed in detail with illustrative examples to commodity markets. The authors showcase how to structure and manage both simple and more complex multi-commodity deals. Addressing the issues of profit-making and risk management, the book reveals how to exploit pay-off profiles and trading strategies on a diversified set of commodity prices. In addition, the book explores how to price energy products and other commodities belonging to markets segmented across specific structural features. The Handbook of Multi-Commodity Markets and Products includes a wealth of proven methods and useful models that can be selected and developed in order to make appropriate estimations of the future evolution of prices and appropriate valuations of products. The authors additionally explore market risk issues and what measures of risk should be adopted for the purpose of accurately assessing exposure from multi-commodity portfolios. This vital resource offers the models, tools, strategies and general information commodity brokers and other professionals need to succeed in today’s highly competitive marketplace.










Intranational Macroeconomics


Book Description

This book brings the intranational macroeconomics literature into clearer focus by collecting the strands of research into a common thread.




An Alternative Unifying Measure of Welfare Gains from Risk-sharing


Book Description

Following Lucas's (1987) standard approach, welfare gains from international risk-sharing have been measured as the percentage increase in consumption levels that leaves individuals indifferent between, autarky and risk-sharing. The author proposes to measure welfare gains as the increase in consumption growth, instead of consumption levels. When the consumption process is non-stationary, the author's proposed measure has several attractive features: it does not depend on the horizon, and it is robust to alternative specifications of the consumption stochastic processes (from geometric Brownian processes, to Orstein-Ulhenbeck mean-reverting processes), and preferences (from constant relative risk aversion preferences to Kreps-Porteus preferences). The author then uses this measure to estimate potential welfare gains from international risk-sharing for a representative U.S. consumer. The author finds that if international risk-sharing leads only to a complete elimination of aggregate consumption volatility (with no impact on consumption growth), it represents gains to a U.S. consumer of only $ 12 a year on average. But if international risk-sharing also permits an increase in consumption growth, it may have a sizable impact on welfare. Each 0.5 percentage point increase in consumption growth, represents gains to a U.S. consumer of about $ 160 a year on average.




Commodity Risk Management


Book Description

This book aims to cover the following general topics: development and assessment of theories for evaluating commodity risk; the role of derivative securities in managing commodity risk; and, an assessment of the actual management of commodity risk in specific situations. The primary contribution of the book is the explicit development of the often overlooked connection between risk management and speculation. The central theme is to demonstrate that commodity risk management decisions require an in depth understanding of speculative strategies. To this end, this book aims to provide a unified treatment of important concepts and techniques that are useful in applying derivative securities in the management of risk arising in commodity markets.







Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System


Book Description

This publication serves as a roadmap for exploring and managing climate risk in the U.S. financial system. It is the first major climate publication by a U.S. financial regulator. The central message is that U.S. financial regulators must recognize that climate change poses serious emerging risks to the U.S. financial system, and they should move urgently and decisively to measure, understand, and address these risks. Achieving this goal calls for strengthening regulators’ capabilities, expertise, and data and tools to better monitor, analyze, and quantify climate risks. It calls for working closely with the private sector to ensure that financial institutions and market participants do the same. And it calls for policy and regulatory choices that are flexible, open-ended, and adaptable to new information about climate change and its risks, based on close and iterative dialogue with the private sector. At the same time, the financial community should not simply be reactive—it should provide solutions. Regulators should recognize that the financial system can itself be a catalyst for investments that accelerate economic resilience and the transition to a net-zero emissions economy. Financial innovations, in the form of new financial products, services, and technologies, can help the U.S. economy better manage climate risk and help channel more capital into technologies essential for the transition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5247742