CORMEC will co-organize a two day conference entitled “Commodities, Volatility, and Risk Management: The Impacts of Trade Restrictions, Market Imperfections, and Green Finance” in Paris, 13-15 May 2019 in cooperation with the Marketing-Finance Research Lab, the University of Illinois and the University of Paris.

Click here for the offical conference program

The topic is commodity pricing and risk management, viewed through the joint prisms of market imperfections and environmental concerns. The focus will be on agricultural and energy markets, with specific themes intended to shine light on research and policy issues that the organizers and the scientific committee believe will be very prominent in the near future.

The areas that the conference seeks to touch upon link financial and environmental economics:

1. Political risk: links between commodity price volatility and trade restrictions, using crop insurance vs. market-based (derivatives) risk management, and the implications of the still-unfolding trade war for basis risk and trading in commodity derivatives markets;
2. New takes on basis risk / derivatives design and effectiveness—risk management for the organic grains and oilseed sector; impact of nearby futures-spot convergence issues on the structure of commodity prices; use of US-based contracts in a world where trade wars and climate change are shifting the geography of agricultural production;
3. Environmental risk in commodity markets: pricing climate risk, measuring and managing price risk in organic agricultural markets, dealing with stranded energy assets;
4. Environmental, Social, Governance: ESG-proofing of investments, distributional effects of energy efficiency rules, poverty & energy theft/consumption in developing countries;
5. Links between technology and commodity market quality (including machine trading and liquidity provision).

The conference will comprise a mix of invited papers (to anchor the conference and set the bar on quality) and submitted papers, plus several panels—all with practitioners and policy makers involved in the discussions. While the principal focus will be on agricultural markets, there will also be components on energy and on shipping.

Keynote speakers from amongst others Princeton University, Oxford University, Carnegie Mellon University and Cornell University confirmed to present their work. In addition to industry leaders (such as the directors of CFTC, World Bank, IADB and exchanges (CME, Deutsch Boerse) will participate.