This book provides a clear-eyed analysis of questions at the intersection of commodity markets, natural resource economics, and public policy.

Commodities have become an important component of many investors' portfolios and the focus of much political controversy over the past decade. This book utilizes structural models to provide a better understanding of how commodities' prices behave and what drives them. It exploits differences across commodities and examines a variety of predictions of the models to identify where they work and where they fail. The findings of the analysis are useful to scholars, traders and policy makers who want to better understand often puzzling - and extreme - movements in the prices of commodities from aluminium to oil to soybeans to zinc.

Philip L. Carret (1896-1998) was a famed investor and founder of The Pioneer Fund (Fidelity Mutual Trust), one of the first Mutual Funds in the United States. A former Barron’s reporter and WWI aviator, Carret launched the Mutual Trust in 1928 after managing money for his friends and family. The initial effort evolved into Pioneer Investments. He ran the fund for 55 years, during which an investment of $10,000 became $8 million. Warren Buffett said of him that he had “the best long term investment record of anyone I know” He is most famous for the long successful track record he achieved investing in Common Stocks and for being one of Warren Buffett’s role models. This book comprises a series of articles written for Barron’s and published in book form in 1930.—Print Ed.

The recent global financial crisis exposed the serious limitations of existing economic and financial models. Not only did macro models fail to predict the crisis, they seemed incapable of explaining what was happening to the economy. Policymakers felt abandoned by the conventional tools of the now obsolete Washington consensus and the World Trade Organization’s oversimplified faith in free markets.The traditional models for agricultural commodities have so far failed to take into account the uncertain character of the global agricultural economy and its ferocious consequences in food price volatility, the worst in 300 years, yielding hunger riots throughout the world. This book explores the elements which could help to close this fundamental modeling gap. To what extent should traditional models be questioned regarding agricultural commodities? Are prices on these markets foreseeable? Can their evolution be either predicted or convincingly simulated, and if so, by which methods and models? Presenting contributions from acknowledged experts from several countries and backgrounds – professors at major international universities or researchers within specialized international organizations – the book concentrates on four issues: the role of expectations and capacity of prediction; policy issues related to development strategies and food security; the role of hoarding and speculation and finally, global modeling methods. The book offers a renewed wisdom on some of the core issues in the world economy today and puts forward important innovations in analyzing these core issues, among which the modular modeling design, the Momagri model being a seminal example of it. Reading this book should inspire fruitful revisions in policy-making to improve the welfare of populations worldwide.

"The conference was organized by the three editors of this book and took place on August 15-16, 2012 in Seattle."--Preface.

You can make large profits by trading commodities--but you’ll need significant practical knowledge of the associated risks and market characteristics before you start.A Trader’s First Book on Commoditiesis a simple, practical and useful guide for new commodities traders. Author Carley Garner provides specific guidance on accessing commodity markets cost-effectively, avoiding common beginners’ mistakes, and improving the odds of successful, profitable trades. Drawing on her extensive experience teaching traders, Garner shows how to calculate profit, loss, and risk in commodities, and choose the best brokerage firm, service level, data sources, and market access for your needs. She’ll help you: · Master the basics of trading commodities painlessly, avoiding beginners mistakes · Get what you need, and prevent paying for what you don’t need · Know what you’re buying, what it costs, the returns you’re earning and the risk you’re taking · Predict price, manage risk, and make trades that reflect your analysis Garner demystifies the industry’s colorful language, helps you clearly understand what you’re buying and selling, and walks you through the entire trading process. She concludes with a refreshingly new look at topics such as trading plans, handling margin calls, and even maintaining emotional stability as a trader. “This book provides the type of information every trader needs to know and the type of information too many traders had to learn the hard and expensive way. Carley offers practical need-to-know, real-world trading tips that are lacking in many books on futures. It will help not only the novice trader, but seasoned veterans as well. This book will serve as a must-have reference in every trader’s library.” --Phil Flynn, Vice President and Senior Market analyst at PFGBest Research, and a Fox Business Network contributor “Refreshing–It’s nice to see a broker who has actually been exposed to the professional side of trading and who bridges that chasm between exchange floor trading and customer service. Carley takes the time to explain verbiage, not just throw buzz words around. A good educational read in my opinion.” --Don Bright, Director, Bright Trading, LLC “This book has the perfect name, the perfect message, and the necessary information for any beginning trader. Take this book home!” --Glen Larson, President, Genesis Financial Technologies, Inc. “As a 35-year veteran of the CME/CBOT trading floor, I can tell you…those who think they can begin trading commodities without knowing the less talked about topics that Carley discusses inA Trader’s First Book on Commoditiesare sadly mistaken. Anyone who trades their own account, or would like to, should read this book.” --Danny Riley, DT Trading

The control of competition is designed, at best, to reconcile socioeconomic stability with innovation, and at worst, to keep competitors out of the market. In this respect, the nineteenth century was no more liberal than the eighteenth century. Even during the presumed liberal nineteenth century, legal regulation played a major role in the economy, and the industrial revolution was based on market institutions and organisations formed during the second half of the seventeenth century. If indeed there is a break in the history of capitalism, it should be situated at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the irruption of mass production, consumption and the welfare state, which introduced new forms of regulation. This book provides a new intellectual, economic and legal history of capitalism from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. It analyzes the interaction between economic practices and legal constructions in France and compares the French case with other Western countries during this period, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Italy.