Commodity currency literature recently stressed the importance of commodity prices as a determinant of real exchange rates in developing countries (Cashin, Cespedes and Sahay 2004). We provide new empirical evidence on this issue by focusing on countries which are specialized in the ex-port of one leading commodity. For those countries, we investigate to which extent their real exchange rate is...

The purpose of this article is to offer some new insights into the ‘gift vs. commodity’ debate. It examines the assumption that commodities and gifts represent two different realities, as first proposed by Marcel Mauss and later elaborated by Chriss Gregory and other anthropologists. It analyzes the conjecture that commodity-exchange is an exchange of alienable, impersonal and anonymous items, ...

This paper demonstrates that “commodity currency” exchange rates have remarkably robust power in predicting future global commodity prices, both in-sample and out-of-sample. A critical element of our in-sample approach is to allow for structural breaks, endemic to empirical exchange rate models, by implementing the approach of Rossi (2005b). Aside from its practical implications, our forecastin...

In this paper, we aim at developing a model for option pricing to reduce the risks associated with Ethiopian commodity prices fluctuations. We used the daily closed Unwashed Lekempti grade 5 (ULK5) coffee and Whitish Wollega Sesame Seed Grade3 (WWSS3) prices obtained from Ethiopia commodity exchange (ECX) market to analyse the prices fluctuations.The natures of log-returns of the prices exhibit a...