The interplay between oil and food commodity prices: Has it changed over time?

Abstract

Using a structural time-varying-parameter Bayesian vector autoregression (TVP-BVAR) framework, this paper documents that oil price increases caused by oil supply disruptions did not affect food commodity prices before the start of the millennium, but had positive spillover effects in more recent periods and particularly in the era around the Great Recession. Likewise, shortfalls in global food commodity supply resulting from bad harvests have positive effects on crude oil prices since the early 2000s, in contrast to the preceding era. The econometric evidence suggests that these developments are not the consequence of the popular biofuels narrative and more likely the result of informational frictions about the global business cycle and information discovery in financialized commodity markets.