The Information Transmission between China and the US Agricultural Commodity Markets

Abstract

This study examines both long-run and short-run linkages between futures and spot prices for a wide range of agricultural commodities in China and the US. We use the Johansen cointegration test to examine the long-run equilibrium relationship in both multivariate and bivariate contexts. The VECM model is used to examine the information transmission in the short-run. Finally, we use Granger causality test to investigate how the information transmission pattern changes under different economic conditions. We find long-run equilibrium relationships between spot and futures prices in the Chinese markets, as well as the futures prices in China and the US. The long-run relationship is consistent with the LOP theory, which indicates that prices of identical assets in different markets should have the same stream of future cash flows after all adjustments. The short-run analyses show the robust bidirectional relationship between futures and spot prices in China, and the futures prices in China and the US. The findings indicate that Chinese agricultural commodity futures played a significant role in the global commodity futures markets. The GFC subsample results are mixed. In general, the domestic information becomes more important compared to the information in the international markets during the crisis and post crisis periods. Whereas, the US futures markets play important price discovery role than Chinese ones during and after crisis in the bivariate context. The findings of this study contribute to the existing literature on information transmission in agriculture commodity markets in the emerging nations by including the futures markets in China and the futures markets of USA, which is a global dominant market. Study also includes the underlying asset market to provide the relationship among all three asset markets. The findings of this study may have important implication for policy makers in emerging markets who seek to develop policies for stability of the commodity prices.