Investigating Properties of Commodity Price Responses to Real and Nominal Shocks

Kim, Hyeongwoo and Zhang, Yunxiao (2018): Investigating Properties of Commodity Price Responses to Real and Nominal Shocks.

Abstract

This paper studies dynamic adjustments of 49 world commodity prices in response to innovations in the nominal exchange rate and the world real GDP. After we estimate the dynamic elasticity of the prices with respect to these shocks, we obtain the kernel density of our estimates to establish stylized facts on the adjustment process of the commodity price toward a new equilibrium path. Our empirical findings imply, on average, that the law of one price holds in the long-run, whereas the substantial degree of short-run price rigidity was observed in response to the nominal exchange rate shock. The real GDP shock tends to generate substantial price fluctuations in the short-run because adjustments of the supply can be limited, but have much weaker effects in the long-run as the supply eventually counterbalances the increase in the demand. Overall, we report persistent long-lasting effects of the nominal exchange rate shock on commodity prices relative to those of the real GDP shock.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Commodity Prices; Price Stickiness; Dynamic Elasticity; Vector Autoregression; Impulse-Response Function; Kernel Density
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles > E31 - Price Level ; Inflation ; Deflation; F - International Economics > F3 - International Finance > F31 - Foreign Exchange; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q0 - General > Q02 - Commodity Markets

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