An overview of global gold market and gold price forecasting

The global gold market has recently attracted a lot of attention and the price of gold is relatively higher than its historical trend. For mining companies to mitigate risk and uncertainty in gold price fluctuations, make hedging, future investment and evaluation decisions, depend on forecasting future price trends. The first section of this paper reviews the world gold market and the historical trend of gold prices from January 1968 to December 2008. This is followed by an investigation into the relationship between gold price and other key influencing variables, such as oil price and global inflation over the last 40 years. The second section applies a modified econometric version of the long-term trend reverting jump and dip diffusion model for forecasting natural-resource commodity prices. This method addresses the deficiencies of previous models, such as jumps and dips as parameters and unit root test for long-term trends. The model proposes that historical data of mineral commodities have three terms to demonstrate fluctuation of prices: a long-term trend reversion component, a diffusion component and a jump or dip component. The model calculates each term individually to estimate future prices of mineral commodities. The study validates the model and estimates the gold price for the next 10 years, based on monthly historical data of nominal gold price.     

我国稀土进出口量与价格关联度状况分析

稀土是我国五大优势矿产资源之一,在我国国民经济建设中具有重要的战略意义.近年来,我国稀土矿产品进出口贸易逐年增长,而进出口价格却呈现较大幅度的波动趋势.从对我国稀土进出口总量、进出口价格走势的分析入手,利用灰色关联度模型评估稀土出口总量分别对出口价格、进口价格、进口总量的相关程度,提出了我国稀土贸易的相关建议.     

猪肉价格周期波动的时空差异特征及影响因素研究

我国作为猪肉生产大国、消费大国,猪肉价格波动事关普通百姓生活。利用2001—2019年猪肉价格省级面板数据,对猪肉价格长期波动的空间差异性进行了分析。结果表明:①从我国八大经济区及调入区、调出区猪肉价格区域差异测度结果来看,北部沿海区域内各省份猪肉价格差异最大,东北区域和长江中游区域差异较小;同时从猪肉价格差异贡献率来看,区域内差异贡献率更大。②从猪肉价格波动时空演进测度结果来看,地区间差异明显存在,同时各省份之间空间集聚性呈现出波动状态,表现出先减弱后增强的长期趋势。③从对猪肉价格周期性变化规律分析结果来看,价格波动存在明显的周期性,“猪瘟”、重大疫情等突发因素短期影响作用较大,而常规因素的影响才是价格波动真正推手。④在所筛选的猪肉价格常规影响因素中,育肥猪配合饲料价格、仔猪价格、地区生产总值引起猪肉价格差异的作用显著,且育肥猪配合饲料价格对猪肉价格差异影响程度最大。     

NORMALIZED AGRICULTURAL PRICES AND WATER RESOURCES PLANNING1

ABSTRACT: Short-term fluctuations in agricultural markets necesitate adjustments in market prices for use in water resources planning. Two procudures for this price normalizing are described and evaluated. The linear treand and weighted average normalizing procedures perform reasonably well, except in cases of dramatic price oscillations.     

International coal prices

The place coal will occupy among the world's energy supplies depends on many factors, including its price trends. This paper reviews recent price trends and supports the thesis that future coal prices are independent of oil prices, and that they will fluctuate between two limits which are based on production and transport costs in the USA and Australia.     

青海省旅游客源市场分析研究

青海省旅游资源独特,资源的垄断性高,但旅游业起步晚且发展水平较低,在国际和国内旅游客源市场上占有的份额小。作者运用1990年～1997年旅游统计资料,研究了青海省国内、国际旅游客源市场的数量和地域构成现状,并针对其客源市场发展目标,提出了相应的开发措施。     

Metal prices and the business cycle

Metal price fluctuations have recently been of interest not only because of their cyclical volatility but also of their interaction with business cycles. A related issue is whether metal prices move together sufficiently to collectively reflect macroeconomic influences. Correlation or the tendency for prices to move together has been termed “comovement”, where the commonality in prices reflects the tendency of commodity markets to respond to common business cycle and trend factors. Metal prices are known to respond to macroeconomic influences and the latter might well explain the common factor which causes them to move together. Our goal is to provide an estimate of the common factor in metal prices and to relate this factor to important macroeconomic influences. The prices we study are for aluminum, copper, tin, lead and zinc; the macroeconomic variables include industrial production, consumer prices, interest rates, stock prices, and exchange rates. Our results confirm that the common factor in metal prices can be related to such macroeconomic influences.     

Forward pricing and efficiency in the silver market

If futures prices ‘fully reflect’ all available information, then these prices may be interpreted as market anticipations of spot (cash) prices at the delivery date of the futures contract. This hypothesis, which has tended to find most support among established markets for storable commodities, is investigated for the Chicago silver futures market. Using instrumental variable estimation and a joint (χ²) test, the unbiased prediction hypothesis is rejected, and a tentative explanation is offered for this outcome. This result, however, does not necessarily imply that the market is inefficient, and two tests of the weak form efficient markets hypothesis suggest that, while there is some slight dependence in past prices, this is only marginally more than would be expected from normal sampling variation.     

Duration and characteristics of metal price cycles

This paper addresses the fluctuations in real metal prices: are they simply random variations or do they display some degree of cyclicality? This study identifies peaks and troughs in the inflation adjusted prices for 14 metals, using monthly average data from January 1947 through December 2007. Duration dependence testing, which is performed on the expansions, contractions, and full cycles, finds many cases in which the duration of these phases are not purely random and have some degree of cyclicality. Additional characterization show that contractions generally persist longer than expansions (in contrast to macroeconomic cycles) that long-term real prices have been trendless, and that the amplitude of price changes over the phases has little regularity. For those performing this type of analysis, the appendices explain the procedures for dating turning points and assessing duration dependence.     

The crude oil market and the gold market: Evidence for cointegration,causality and price discovery

Given that the gold market and the crude oil market are the main representatives of the large commodity markets, it is of crucial practical significance to analyze their cointegration relationship and causality, and investigate their respective contribution, from the perspective of price discovery, to the common price trend so as to interpret the dynamics of the whole large commodity market and forecast the fluctuation of crude oil and gold prices.     

辽宁省房地产业市场结构与价格行为的实证分析

从产业组织理论的角度对辽宁省房地产市场的市场结构进行了分析,得出辽宁省房地产市场处于完全竞争类型,且市场集中度有下降趋势.虽然城镇居民和农村居民的可支配收入年均增长率大于房价年均增长率,但房价增长对城镇居民的影响并不明显,而对农村居民的影响较明显,尤其是那些从农村出来准备定居城市的"准城市"居民.应用价格蛛网模型推导出辽宁省房地产市场在房价为3114.3元/m2时,该市场处于出清状态.基于当前的房价,辽宁省房地产市场有一定的泡沫.     

Feasibility,forward pricing and returns: Recent developments in the literature on futures trading

In recent years the feasibility conditions for market establishment and the information value of futures markets have been central issues in futures market research. This paper first discusses recent developments under the heading of feasibility conditions, including the obsolescence of the commodity characteristics approach and the search for a comprehensive framework. Second, futures markets collect and disseminate information, and in so doing they are centres of rational price formation, and the forms of tests that have been developed to ascertain whether they perform this function efficiently are considered. Futures markets also perform a forward pricing function: their prices may be regarded as market anticipations of subsequent cash prices. 1970s' literature has addressed this question, finding differences in performance between continuous and non-continuous inventory commodities. This paper discusses the reasons for and economic implications of these results.     

Forecasting precious metal price movements using trader positions

In the early 2000s, the precious metal markets entered into a new phase where a steady rise of prices had been observed until the October 2008 crash. Given the size and importance of precious metal market, as well as the hedging capacity of precious metals due to their low correlation with equity markets (Draper et al., 2006), the question we want to arise is whether trader positions predict the direction of gold, platinum, and silver spot price movements. The forecasting content of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitment of Traders report for platinum, silver and gold prices using trader positions is investigated in a VAR framework. Granger causality tests are conducted to determine whether a relation between trader positions and market prices exists. An examination of the extreme trader positions on price movements is also conducted. The results indicate that market return is a significant parameter in explaining trader’s positions for all trader types in each of the precious metal markets under consideration after the beginning of 2000s where we detect a structural break for each of the market under study. Commercial traders are found to be negative feedback traders, that is, they sell when the prices increase in the market. On the other hand, in line with the previous literature, a positive correlation between returns and positions held by non-commercial and non-reporting traders is found. However, trader’s net positions do not lead market returns in general. There is some evidence on the forecasting ability of extreme trader positions on market returns.     

Assessing the long-run availability of copper

This study questions recent research [Gordon, R.B., Bertram, M., Graedel, T.E., 2006. Metal stocks and sustainability. Proc. Natl. Acad. USA 103(5), 1209–1214] that concludes that the world is likely to experience a growing scarcity of copper over this century. In particular, it focuses on the methodology used in this work that assumes the usable copper contained in the earth is a fixed amount. While the fixed-stock paradigm is intuitively appealing—after all the earth is finite so the amount of any commodity it contains must also be finite—and used with some frequency by others as well to assess long-run trends in the availability of non-renewable mineral resources, it is flawed and can lead to overly pessimistic as well as overly optimistic expectations. A more useful and appropriate approach, the opportunity-cost paradigm, assesses long-run trends in availability by real prices or alternative measures of what society has to give up or sacrifice to obtain another ton of copper or barrel of oil. This approach indicates that copper could conceivably become less scarce by the end of the century. Whether this will be the case or whether copper will be more scarce, however, depends on a number of factors, including the future course of technological change, whose influence no one can predict with any degree of certainty decades in advance.     

Forestry policy and woodfuel markets in Malawi

Forestry and energy policies in Malawi place the blame for the country's high rate of deforestation on the demand for woodfuel. The government has been involved in a range of questionable supply-side initiatives, as well as in a number of interventions in woodfuel markets, with the objective of slowing rates of deforestation. It seeks to encourage farmers to grow woodfuel to meet market demands, and has provided subsidies to do so. The Forest Department has kept prices for firewood from its plantations low, both in order to discourage the market for wood from free resources and because of concerns about the impact of high producer prices on the urban poor. In doing so, the government is less able to rely on the market to provide producers with the incentive to plant trees to meet market demands. In any event, the market accounts for a relatively small proportion of total woodfuel demand. Policies do not distinguish between rural household demands and the specific market demands which are having the greatest impact on deforestation: woodfuel for urban markets, for tobacco curing, and for small industries. These, coupled with the expansion of the estate sector, have had afar greater impact on woodland clearance than rural, subsistence woodfuel demands. Rural household energy demands need to be addressed from a much broader perspective which considers the household's larger needs for tree based products or outputs: income, food, fibre, fodder, soil fertility, as well as for fuel .     

影响中国碳价的能源价格因素灰关联研究

本文选取中国碳排放价格数据和8种能源价格指数为研究变量,运用灰色关联方法研究了中国能源价格对中国碳价的影响。研究结果发现,化石能源价格对中国碳排放价格的影响较大,特别是煤炭、成品油和基础油价格对碳价的影响最大;低污染能源中,与天然气相比,液化气价格对中国碳排放价格影响明显。研究结果指出了保持碳市场价格稳定、防范价格异常波动的重要性,并从能源价格体系和能源消费结构角度提出了政策建议。     

Questioning desertification in dryland sub–Saharan Africa

Signs of desertification in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s were closely linked to rainfall fluctuations. There may now be an upward trend in the Sahel, but climate change models do not yet provide reliable predictions of rainfall. As family farms become smaller under conditions of population growth, some people move to new areas or new occupations (urban population is growing much faster than rural) and farmers attempt to raise the value of output (crops or livestock) per hectare. Long–term data for selected countries and areas provide some evidence of positive trends. Case studies show that adaptive strategies of small farmers include techniques to improve fertility, conserve water, manage trees, increase livestock, and take advantage of changing markets. However, their investments in improving land and productivity are constrained by poverty. Governments can best help by improving market access and opportunities for non–farm activities. The region's climate is characterized by variable rainfall, which means that droughts will continue to occur unpredictably.     

Impact of market reforms on future patterns of non-ferrous metal consumption of the former Soviet Union

The study examines the implications of market-oriented reforms on the prospects of non-ferrous metal use in the former USSR. Past metal consumption behaviour of the USSR is found to differ considerably from prevailing patterns of the advanced market economies. The study estimates a large 'intensity- of-use' gap across metals, which can be taken as a relatively easily mobilizable source for efficiency improvements via market reforms. Two scenarios for economic reforms are modelled, notably radical and gradual. Both are shown to cause a collapse of varying intensity in domestic metal demand lasting until the mid-1990s. For the subsequent period, a turnaround in consumption trends is projected, which is sharper under the radical reform scenario. The projected collapse of domestic demand argues for an increasing exportable surplus in the former Soviet Union for a range of non-ferrous metals, with potentially severe depressive effect on world prices.     

Oil to 2000

Current surplus oil production capacity had its origins in the price increases of the 1970s. Those increases encouraged both energy conservation and the entry of new producers. Recent increases in oil demand reflect the belief among energy users that in real terms in the long term, prices will be stable. There is good reason to believe that this will be so, even at the current rate of increase it will be 15 years before demand matches current capacity. Given that situation it is difficult to see OPEC following any other pricing policy than the one currently in place. In the meantime market prices will further encourage vertical integration.     

Using markets for land preservation: Results of a TDR program

This paper reviews different approaches to using transferable development rights (TDRs) as a way to preserve rural lands in the face of development pressure. One TDR program is examined in detail, that of Calvert County, Maryland, which has had an active TDR market since the mid-1980s. This program uses TDRs as a key policy tool for achieving a total amount of preserved acreage in the county, and for providing incentives for preservation in some areas and development in others. The paper examines both the early difficulties in developing participation in the program, and the events that lead eventually to an active TDR market. It assesses the workings of the market including factors that influence the demand and supply of TDRs, the movement of prices over time, and the location of preserved areas and of additional developed areas. The study found that the program is achieving many of the county's land preservation goals because of the high level of activity in the TDR market. However, most of the additional density is being channeled into rural areas with underlying low-density zoning.