This book provides a clear-eyed analysis of questions at the intersection of commodity markets, natural resource economics, and public policy.

The early 21st century has seen a prolonged price boom in non-fuel commodities, coupled with a volatile performance in fuel prices. This new collection presents the latest research on commodity prices and economic development in the context of this changing globalized economy. Global Commodity Markets and Development Economics brings together analyses from a number of perspectives in order to explore commodity price developments. Chapters explore long term commodity trends, the evolution of relative price developments, the relationship of the domestic commodity sector with global supply chains, agri-food prices, and the role of oil markets in the global economy. Through considering a diverse range of countries including China, Russia and the United States, the authors examine key fuel and non-fuel commodity markets and offer a window into important trends and developments. This book will be relevant to those with an interest in development economics, international economics and energy markets.

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.

As commodity markets have continued their expansion an extensive and complex financial industry has developed to service them. This industry includes hundreds of participating firms, including asset managers, brokers, consultants, verification agencies and a myriad of other institutions. Universities and other training institutions have responded to this rapid expansion of commodity markets as well as their substantial future growth potential by launching specialized courses on the subject. The Economics of Commodity Markets attempts to bridge the gap between academics and working professionals by way of a textbook that is both theoretically informative and practical. Based in part on the authors’ teaching experience of commodity finance at the University Paris Dauphine, the book covers all important commodity markets topics and includes coverage of recent topics such as financial applications and intuitive economic reasoning. The book is composed of three parts that cover: commodity market dynamics, commodities and the business cycle, and commodities and fundamental value. The key original approach to the subject matter lies in a shift away from the descriptive to the econometric analysis of commodity markets. Information on market trends of commodities is presented in the first part, with a strong emphasis on the quantitative treatment of that information in the remaining two parts of the book. Readers are provided with a clear and succinct exposition of up-to-date financial economic and econometric methods as these apply to commodity markets. In addition a number of useful empirical applications are introduced and discussed. This book is a self-contained offering, discussing all key methods and insights without descending into superfluous technicalities. All explanations are structured in an accessible manner, permitting any reader with a basic understanding of mathematics and finance to work their way through all parts of the book without having to resort to external sources.

A rigorous but practical introduction to the economic, financial, and political principles underlying commodity markets. Commodities have become one of the fastest growing asset classes of the last decade and the object of increasing attention from investors, scholars, and policy makers. Yet existing treatments of the topic are either too theoretical, ignoring practical realities, or largely narrative and nonrigorous. This book bridges the gap, striking a balance between theory and practice. It offers a solid foundation in the economic, financial, and political principles underlying commodities markets. The book, which grows out of courses taught by the author at Columbia and Johns Hopkins, can be used by graduate students in economics, finance, and public policy, or as a conceptual reference for practitioners. After an introduction to basic concepts and a review of the various types of commodities—energy, metals, agricultural products—the book delves into the economic and financial dynamics of commodity markets, with a particular focus on energy. The text covers fundamental demand and supply for resources, the mechanics behind commodity financial markets, and how they motivate investment decisions around both physical and financial portfolio exposure to commodities, and the evolving political and regulatory landscape for commodity markets. Additional special topics include geopolitics, financial regulation, and electricity markets. The book is divided into thematic modules that progress in complexity. Text boxes offer additional, related material, and numerous charts and graphs provide further insight into important concepts.

What is a global market? How does it work? At a time when new crises in world markets cannot be satisfactorily resolved through old ideas, Market Threads presents a detailed analysis of the international cotton trade and argues for a novel and groundbreaking understanding of global markets. The book examines the arrangements, institutions, and power relations on which cotton trading and production depend, and provides an alternative approach to the analysis of pricing mechanisms. Drawing upon research from such diverse places as the New York Board of Trade and the Turkish and Egyptian countrysides, the book explores how market agents from peasants to global merchants negotiate, accept, reject, resist, reproduce, understand, and misunderstand a global market. The book demonstrates that policymakers and researchers must focus on the specific practices of market maintenance in order to know how they operate. Markets do not simply emerge as a relationship among self-interested buyers and sellers, governed by appropriate economic institutions. Nor are they just social networks embedded in wider economic social structures. Rather, global markets are maintained through daily interventions, the production of prosthetic prices, and the waging of struggles among those who produce and exchange commodities. The book illustrates the crucial consequences that these ideas have on economic reform projects and market studies. Spanning a variety of disciplines, Market Threads offers an original look at the world commodity trade and revises prevailing explanations for how markets work.

Hough recasts Colombia's endemic rural violence in a world-historical perspective that connects local labour and development dynamics to the arc of US global hegemony. This book will appeal to scholars of labour studies, agrarian studies, development, globalisation, Latin America, political science, political economy and economic sociology.

The world economy is experiencing a very strong but uneven recovery, with many emerging market and developing economies facing obstacles to vaccination. The global outlook remains uncertain, with major risks around the path of the pandemic and the possibility of financial stress amid large debt loads. Policy makers face a difficult balancing act as they seek to nurture the recovery while safeguarding price stability and fiscal sustainability. A comprehensive set of policies will be required to promote a strong recovery that mitigates inequality and enhances environmental sustainability, ultimately putting economies on a path of green, resilient, and inclusive development. Prominent among the necessary policies are efforts to lower trade costs so that trade can once again become a robust engine of growth. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Economic Prospects. The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.

In the early 2000s, Chinese demand for imported commodities ballooned as the country continued its breakneck economic growth. Simultaneously, global markets in metals and fuels experienced a boom of unprecedented extent and duration. Meanwhile, resource-rich states in the Global South from Argentina to Angola began to advance a range of new development strategies, breaking away from the economic orthodoxies to which they had long appeared tied. In China’s Wake reveals the surprising connections among these three phenomena. Nicholas Jepson shows how Chinese demand not only transformed commodity markets but also provided resource-rich states with the financial leeway to set their own policy agendas, insulated from the constraints and pressures of capital markets and multilateral creditors such as the International Monetary Fund. He combines analysis of China-led structural change with fine-grained detail on how the boom played out across fifteen different resource-rich countries. Jepson identifies five types of response to boom conditions among resource exporters, each one corresponding to a particular pattern of domestic social and political dynamics. Three of these represent fundamental breaks with dominant liberal orthodoxy—and would have been infeasible without spiraling Chinese demand. Jepson also examines the end of the boom and its consequences, as well as the possible implications of future China-driven upheavals. Combining a novel theoretical approach with detailed empirical analysis at national and global scales, In China’s Wake is an important contribution to global political economy and international development studies.

In the late Middle Ages the county of Holland experienced a process of uncommonly rapid commercialisation. Comparing Holland to England and Flanders this book examines how the institutions that shaped commodity markets contributed to this remarkable development.