The prices of renewable commodities: a robust stationarity analysis*

This paper addresses the problem of testing for persistence in the effects of the shocks affecting the prices of renewable commodities, which have potential implications on stabilisation policies and economic forecasting, among other areas. A robust methodology is employed that enables the determination of the potential presence and number of instant/gradual structural changes in the series, stationarity testing conditional on the number of changes detected and the detection of change points. This procedure is applied to the annual real prices of eighteen renewable commodities over the period of 1900–2018. Results indicate that most of the series display non-linear features, including quadratic patterns and regime transitions that often coincide with well-known political and economic episodes. The conclusions of stationarity testing suggest that roughly half of the series are integrated. Stationarity fails to be rejected for grains, whereas most livestock and textile commodities do reject stationarity. Evidence is mixed in all soft commodities and tropical crops, where stationarity can be rejected in approximately half of the cases. The implication would be that for these commodities, stabilisation schemes would not be recommended.