Commodity Price Dynamics: A Structural Approach

by Craig Pirrong

Commodities have become an important component of many investors' portfolios and the focus of much political controversy over the past decade. This book utilizes structural models to provide a better understanding of how commodities' prices behave and what drives them. It exploits differences across commodities and examines a variety of predictions of the models to identify where they work and where they fail. The findings of the analysis are useful to scholars, traders, and policy makers who want to better understand often puzzling – and extreme – movements in the prices of commodities from aluminum to oil to soybeans to zinc.

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2011

About the author

Dr Pirrong is Professor of Finance, and Energy Markets Director for the Global Energy Management Institute at the Bauer College of Business of the University of Houston. He was previously Watson Family Professor of Commodity and Financial Risk Management at Oklahoma State University, and a faculty member at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, and Washington University. Professor Pirrong's research focuses on the organization of financial exchanges, derivatives clearing, competition between exchanges, commodity markets, derivatives market manipulation, the relation between market fundamentals and commodity price dynamics, and the implications of this relation for the pricing of commodity derivatives. He has published 30 articles in professional publications, is the author of three books, and has consulted widely, primarily on commodity and market manipulation-related issues. He holds a Ph.D. in business economics from the University of Chicago.

Reviews

[Jessica]

I gave up 😂

Learned enough about Brownian, Black Scholes, and other theories via his other resources without this specific publication , and honestly don’t see myself pricing commodities this way any time near the future. Might revisit 5-10 years from now or when I want to snooze off