The Impact of Speculation on Commodity Futures – A Review of the Findings of 100 Empirical Studies

There are numerous empirical studies on the impact of speculation on commodity futures prices. The papers strongly differ in terms of the focus variable (e.g. price, volatility, spillover effects) of speculative effects, the speculation measure used, and their methodological sophistication and quality. We review and evaluate the methodology and results of 100 papers which have been published (or are at least frequently quoted) on this subject over the past decade. While the overall picture indicates that the number of studies which report reinforcing and weakening effects is about the same, the results shift in favor of finding (clear or mixed) weakening effects if studies use direct measures of speculation.