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...

the aim of this study is to explore the feasibility of setting up a commodities futures market in iran. specifications for the margin requirements, daily price movement limits, the length of expiration intervals, tick sizes and contract size of various potential future contracts are hereby examined. saffron, pistachio and rice emerge as the three suitable iranian agricultural commodities. a new...

1. The second question suggested by the analytical framework is whether market failures will result from decreases in the prices of commodity outputs, in a context of agricultural policy reform. To answer this question, we need to know: (1) how price decreases will affect the level of production of both commodity and non-commodity outputs, and (2) what is the value of the resulting reduction in...