Commodity markets

New York Commodity Market (COMEX) prices from 1982 to 1993 ate given in Table 7. The economic aspects of silver have been reviewed (14). 

If the product is essentially identical to that produced by other manufacturers, then the price is determined principally by the commodity market price. However, contract features such as guaranteed deHvery schedules can influence price. Examples of commodity pricing are petrochemicals, petroleum feedstocks, petroleum products, and primary metals. 

United States in 1998) from coal (56%), nuclear (20%), natural gas (11%), hydro (8%), oil (3%), biomass (1.5%), geothermal (0.2%), wind (0.1%), and solar (0.02%). Recently, wholesale and some retail markets have been unbundled, allowing competitors to sell electrons with the monopoly utility or municipality providing the transmission service. Open-access restructuring gives customers choices and creates a commodity market in which the lowest-cost electricity wins market share at the expense of higher-cost alternatives. 

Commodity Commodity Market Value— Monetary Losses from Potential Production—... 

Commodity market value and monetary loss were constructed from information given in "Crop Losses Due to Weeds in Canada and the United States", 1984 J.M. Chandler, A. S. Hamill, and A.G. Thomas, Special Report. Weed Science Society of America, Champaign, IL. 

EC (2011) Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions Tackling the Challenges in Commodity Markets and on Raw Materials, KOM (2011) 25 final, Brussels... 

Commodity markets are also characterized by more intense competition in supply and demand with multiple offering suppliers and multiple demanding customers. This causes the fact that a customer can change to a different supplier and a supplier can supply alternative customers more easily compared to specialty markets. Specialty markets are also often characterized by close cooperation between customer and supplier e.g. using just-in-time delivery in the automotive industry requiring a close integration and collaboration. 

Bourbeau B, Crainic TG, Gendreau M, Robert J (2005) Design for optimized multi-lateral multi-commodity markets. European Journal of Operational Research 163 (2) 503-529... 

Guvenen O (1998) International commodity market models and policy analysis. Kluwer, Dordrecht... 

Hailwood P (1979) Stabilization of international commodity markets. Jai Press, Greenwich... 

Labys WC (1975) Quantitative Models of Commodity Markets, Ballinger, Cambridge, MA... 

Roche J (1995) Forecasting Commodity Markets Using Technical Fundamental and Econometric Analysis, Probus, London... 

To summarize, an increasingly constricted industry is an engine for the expansion of chemical commodity markets and the invention of new arenas for the consumption of chemicals. It is in part the supply of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers that sets the conditions for chemical demand. Internalizing the costs associated with chemical risks, especially under these constrictive economic conditions, is essentially unthinkable. As such, the risks and hazards associated with the industry are largely shunted downwards along the commodity chain to other players, including applicator service providers. 

Biofuels such as biodiesel and bioethanol are, for now, the main alternatives to fossil fuels for the most polluting activities related to transportation. Presently, feedstocks for biofuels production are all of natural origin and as such are subject to uncontrolled seasonal variations. For economic reasons the purchase of these feedstocks from different parts of the world follows the dynamics of commodities markets. ... 

With the recent tightening of the sulfur supply situation, both in North American and worldwide, we can understand why prices increased over the past two years. It is, perhaps, less easy to understand why they expanded so rapidly. However, most of us are aware that prices can shift radically in commodity markets - both up and down - depending on supply/demand shifts, market psychology, regulatory changes, etc. The recent situation in precious metals offers a good example. 

Speculation on the prices of wheat, rice, and soy at the world s largest commodities markets. 

Furthermore, the chemical industry stands apart from other commodity industries in that a wide gap separates the top and bottom performers. In November 2004, for example, the top quartile of chemical companies had a market-to-book ratio 3.1 times the bottom quartile s - a far wider spread than that of other asset-heavy industries, such as automotive (1.9), pulp and paper (1.8), and steel (1.6). Companies in those industries operate in more transparent and global commodity markets with fewer strategic options at the corporate level. By contrast, the far more complex chemical markets are fragmented into thousands of submarkets... 

Cement is a local commodity market. .. haulage costs are significant... therefore [we] expect significant cost pass-through. 

Exploitation can arise in several markets. In an analysis of class that also applies to exploitation, Weber wrote that "the struggle in which class situations are effective has progressively shifted from consumption credit toward, first, competitive struggles in the commodity market and then toward wage disputes on the labour market". Roemer similarly distinguishes between exploitation arising in labour markets, commodity... 

Independent producers. This category has two radically different subclasses. The first is production for subsistence, the other "simple commodity production". In both cases the producers own their means of production and operate them without the help of hired labour. In the first, the productive unit is self-sufficient, in the second it is integrated in a commodity market. Production for subsistence has been the rule in most traditional peasant societies. To a variable extent it has been mixed with some extraction of surplus labour in the form of taxation. It is then usually better characterized as dependent production, as in the Asiatic mode of production. The mere fact that taxation takes place is not, however, sufficient to allow us to assert that the producers have less than full ownership of their means of production. (See the discussion in 4.15 of the relation between taxation and exploitation.)... 

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