Authors: Anestis Galanis, Vangelis Manouvelos

Title: The role of Commodity Exchange Markets in the Global Economy

Abstract

Commodities form an alternative investment market which is of great interest. It is mainly carried out via the futures market of the relevant Stock Exchanges and includes a variety of commodities as well as stock derivatives of the commodities traded.

The first stage of the organized economy is the purchasing and selling of unprocessed products. Gradually, in the course of time, commodity markets became organized and transactions started being carried out among unknown traders and at the same time there was a gradual elimination of the risk of default and eventually the internationalization of trade.

Nowadays, stock markets perform a particularly important role in global economic activity, and is of great importance. The features of the largest commodity exchanges and the commodities traded in them will be analyzed. Reference will be made to the efforts and feasibility of establishing a corresponding market in Greece and which criteria must be in mind in order for its operation to be successful.

In this paper we study the interaction of macroeconomic variables (consumer price index, industrial production index, long-term interest rates and real effective exchange rate) on the average monthly prices of crude oil and gold by estimating a VAR model as well as determining the relationships between the variables (Granger causality).