Abstract

Commodity futures have been largely blamed for the price hikes in 2007/mid-2008 and 2010/2011 and the decreased food security around the world, especially in less developed countries. There still exist serious disagreements between most economists and policymakers as to whether this is the case. We run time-series regressions for all samples and subsamples for lower-income, middle-income, and high-income countries respectively. The empirical results show that commodity futures have a more significant negative impact on food security in low-income countries than in middle-income and high-income economies. Financial crises, however, have a significant impact on food security in all the regional divisions as a whole and are seen to exasperate the negative effect of some of the commodity futures on food security. We also find evidence that a certain degree of speculation in some commodities stabilises prices of those commodities as expected by theory. Our results have important policy implications as policymakers must control these speculations but should also be careful not to overregulate the market.

摘要

商品期货在很大程度上被归咎于 2007/2008 年中和 2010/2011 年的价格上涨以及世界各地，尤其是欠发达国家的粮食安全下降。大多数经济学家和政策制定者之间仍然存在严重分歧。我们分别对低收入、中等收入和高收入国家的所有样本和子样本进行时间序列回归。实证结果表明，与中等收入和高收入经济体相比，商品期货对低收入国家粮食安全的负面影响更为显着。然而，金融危机对整个区域部门的粮食安全产生了重大影响，并且被视为加剧了某些商品期货对粮食安全的负面影响。我们还发现证据表明，某些商品的某种程度的投机可以稳定这些商品的价格，正如理论所预期的那样。我们的结果具有重要的政策含义，因为政策制定者必须控制这些投机行为，但也应注意不要过度监管市场。