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Journal of Finance Vol. 71 No. 4 2016

A Model of Financialization of Commodities

Suleyman Basak1,2,3,4,5; Anna Pavlova6

1 University of St.Gallen · 2 Lauder Business School · 3 Imperial Valley College · 4 Rothschild Caesarea Foundation · 5 Institut National de Statistique et d'Economie Appliquée · 6 Goldman Sachs (United States)

open access

Abstract

We analyze how institutional investors entering commodity futures markets, referred to as the financialization of commodities, affect commodity prices. Institutional investors care about their performance relative to a commodity index. We find that all commodity futures prices, volatilities, and correlations go up with financialization, but more so for index futures than for nonindex futures. The equity‐commodity correlations also increase. We demonstrate how financial markets transmit shocks not only to futures prices but also to commodity spot prices and inventories. Spot prices go up with financialization, and shocks to any index commodity spill over to all storable commodity prices.

DOI
10.1111/jofi.12408
Volume
71
Issue
4
Pages
1511-1556
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

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