Beyond Oil: The Origins of Commodity Price Fluctuations

Alvin Lumbanraja, Sarah Mouabbi, Evgenia Passari and Adrien Rousset Planat

No 21244, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Commodity supply shocks are a plausible but empirically elusive source of business-cycle fluctuations. We develop a comprehensive framework to measure them, constructing daily supply and demand proxies for 20 commodities — spanning energy, metals, agriculture, and livestock — from textual analysis of over one million news articles (2001-2023). These measures allow us to separate supply from demand across the full commodity market, not just oil. A striking finding emerges: non-oil supply disruptions affect inflation and industrial production at least as strongly as oil disturbances, a result previously undocumented in the literature. Transmission varies sharply with countries' commodity trade positions: net importers experience more persistent output contractions and stronger inflation pass-through, while net exporters are partially insulated.

Date: 2026-03
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