The dramatic price falls of 2014–2015 marked the end of the most powerful and enduring commodity boom since the Second World War. Now in its third edition, this book acts as a guide to the ins and outs of the primary commodity universe. Updates to this edition reflect on the consequences of both China's economic slowdown as its industrialization enters a new, less commodity demanding phase, and changes in the USA's trade policy under the Trump administration. Additionally, this edition takes into account recent developments in world oil markets and examines the effects of increased climate concerns. The authors introduce and explain pertinent issues surrounding international commodity markets such as the global geography of raw materials, price formation, price trends, the role of commodity exchanges, the threat of depletion, cartel action, state ownership, emerging commodity nationalism and more.

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A widespread and pessimistic view of the availability of mineral commodities calls for strong government initiatives to ensure adequate future supplies. This article provides a more market oriented and optimistic perspective, one that focuses on production costs and prices rather than physical availability. It sees short-run shortages continuing to plague commodity markets in the future as in the past. Though painful while they last, these shortages are temporary and do not pose a serious long-run threat to human welfare. Moreover, even without government intervention, they self-correct. The sharply higher prices that they evoke create strong incentives that foster supply and curb demand.

Potentially more serious are long-run shortages due to mineral depletion. Such shortages are often thought to be inevitable, a conclusion that flows directly from the physical view of depletion. For various reasons, we reject this view of depletion in favor of an economic view. The latter recognizes that depletion may create long-run shortages, but stresses that this need not be the case if new technology can continue to offset the cost-increasing effects of depletion in the future as it has in the past. The economic view also suggests that a list of mineral commodities most threatened by depletion can best be compiled using cumulative availability curves rather than the more common practice of calculating commodity life expectancies based on estimates of available stocks.

This paper compares the global markets for gold and oil so as to explain the surprisingly high correlation of the two materials’ prices since 1970, and the exceedingly impressive rise of both price series compared with that of virtually all other primary commodities. We propose that developments in the oil market, and the resulting effects on the macroeconomy, influenced investment activity in gold, thus providing the most plausible explanation for the two commodities’ price synchronization. Our view on the extraordinary price increases of oil and gold, compared to a broad category of metals and minerals, is that oil prices rose first based on above-ground hurdles that restrained the capacity to produce, and gold prices then reacted as they were pushed up by rising safe-haven investment to store value – an attribute not shared by other metals and minerals. The paper also comments on the likely future price evolution of these important materials, arguing that oil prices will stagnate at levels observed from late 2014, or even weaken in the coming decades, but that gold prices will continue to ride relatively high – thus leading to a collapse of the oil/gold price connection.

The 2010s have been a dramatic period for most primary commodity markets. Producers suffered heavily as prices fell in response to new supply facilities going into production, juxtaposed against disappointing demand evolution from China in particular, marking the end of the most powerful and enduring commodity boom since the Second World War. This book is a guide to the primary commodity universe, an increasingly crucial part of the world economy. In this updated edition, Marian Radetzki and Linda Wårell introduce and explain pertinent issues surrounding international commodity markets, including the importance of fossil markets among commodities, price formation, price trends, the shift in primary commodity consumption towards Asia, the increasing reliance on commodity exchanges, new relaxed attitude towards depletion, cartel action, and the revival of nationalism and state ownership. This is an accessible read for graduates, academic researchers, and professionals in the mineral and energy sectors.