Modeling And Forecasting Primary Commodity Prices

Labys (emeritus, West Virginia U.) describes new mathematical, statistical, and econometric methods for analyzing, modeling, and forecasting the prices of primary commodities on international markets (generally including aluminum, bananas, beef, cocoa, coffee, copper, corn/maize, cotton, gold, jute, lead, nickel, petroleum, rice, rubber, silver, sisal, soybeans, sugar, tea, tin, tungsten, wheat, wool, and zinc). He presents times series testing methods that differentiate among short, medium and long run commodity price movements. Also the traditional linear modeling approach is extended to nonlinear modeling by applying fractional order tests to spot and futures prices and structural time series models in the frequency domain and wavelet models in the time-frequency domain are employed as superior to previous time series and regression methods. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Professor Walter C. Labys is Benedum Distinguished Scholar in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Program at West Virginia University, USA. He is Gunnar Myrdal Scholar at the United Nations Economics Commission for Europe and has been Faculty Research Associate of the Group on Applied Econometric Research at the University of the Mediterranean (Aix-Marseille) in France. Over the past thirty years, Professor Labys has pioneered in the development and application of econometric methods important for analyzing commodity price behaviour, the modelling of agricultural, mineral and energy markets, and the impact of commodity markets on the stability and growth of surrounding developing economies. He has authored and co-authored more than fourteen books and numerous articles in leading journals of agricultural, energy and resource economics as well as international trade.