The effect of futures markets on the stability of commodity prices

Johan de Jong, Joep Sonnemans and Jan Tuinstra

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 198, issue C, 176-211

Abstract: Do futures markets have a stabilizing or destabilizing effect on commodity prices? The empirical evidence is inconclusive. We try to resolve this question by means of a learning-to-forecast experiment in which a futures market and a spot market are coupled. The strength of the coupling depends positively on the number of speculators on the futures market and negatively on storage costs and speculator risk aversion. We find that the spot price volatility changes non-monotonically with the strength of the coupling, resulting in a stabilizing effect on spot prices for weakly coupled markets and a destabilizing effect when the coupling with the futures market is strong.

Keywords: Expectations feedback; Futures markets; Price volatility; Experimental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D84 G13 G41 Q02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122001202
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:198:y:2022:i:c:p:176-211

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.03.025

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().