Seasonality Fingerprint on Global Trading of Food-commodities. A Data-mining Approach

Abstract

We analyze the United Nations commodities trade database (UN comtrade), comprised of international commodities exchanges in volume and price with monthly resolution. We introduce a trade impact index to quantify the impact, in terms of distance travelled, of importing a specific food raw commodity in a specific period of the year and in a specific country of the world. This index captures the seasonal exchange of raw commodities in an insightful and concise manner.