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

There are numerous empirical studies on the impact of speculation on commodity futures markets. The papers strongly differ in terms of the focus variable (e.g. price, volatility, spill-over effects) of speculative effects, the speculation measure used, and broad quality. We review and evaluate the methodology and results of 100 papers which have been published (or are at least frequently cited) on this subject over the past decade. While the overall picture indicates that the number of studies which support and contradict the criticized effects of speculation is about the same, the results shift against the criticized effects if the studies use direct measures of speculation, except for price. Applying dif- ferent paper quality standards does not fundamentally change our findings.