How to effectively analyze, model, and forecast today's commodity markets

Resource commodity markets play a central role in economic development, international trade, and global economic and political stability. The onset of globalization and the spectacular growth and industrial development of China, India, and other Southeast Asian countries-along with an increased use of agricultural commodities for ethanol production-have significantly added to total resource commodity demands and caused unprecedented price increases. Today, the economic analysis and modeling of world commodity markets is more important than ever before.

Commodity Modeling and Pricing provides extensions and applications of state-of-the-art methods for analyzing resource commodity behavior. Drawing from the seminal work of Professor Walter Labys on the development of econometric methods for forecasting commodity prices, this collection of essays features expert contributors ranging from practitioners in private industry, public sector, and nongovernmental organizations to scholars in higher education-all of whom were Labys's former students or collaborators.

The essays are divided into four parts according to the issues they address. In Part I, the dynamic behavior of commodity prices is analyzed in terms of its nonlinear chaotic and cyclical properties. In Part II, commodity inventory adjustments are then introduced to the price framework. Part III applies innovative modeling methods to the supply and demand aspects of commodity markets as a multivariate equilibrating mechanism. In Part IV, these modeling efforts are expanded beyond direct market phenomena to include the interactions between commodities, other forms of resources, and the environment. The resource commodities studied vary among chapters but, in total, include aluminum, coal, cocoa, coffee, copper, corn/maize, cotton, crude oil, gold, lead, rice, rubber, silver, soybeans, sugar, tea, tin, water, wheat, wine, wool, and zinc.

In recent years, we have rediscovered the severe consequences of resource exhaustion, environmental damage, and market instability. Commodity Modeling and Pricing provides a perspective for future problem solving and research, offering the latest available information on the application of a variety of econometric, programming, and related modeling methods that would help us to analyze, predict, and provide policy to deal with these critical economic and environmental problems.