Creating Agricultural Markets: How the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange Connects Farmers and Buyers through Partnership and Technology

The article deals with characteristic features of economic anthropology"s rhetoric of reciprocity and analyzes the factors that affected its formation. The authors consider two principal interpretations of reciprocity in economic anthropology that were formed under the influence of its two main founders - Malinowski and Mauss. The characteristic features of their two types of rhetoric are discussed together with the purposes for which they were used. Two different intentions were pivotal for the work of these researchers and their followers: first, to establish economic anthropology as a positivistic science; and second, to use the analysis of archaic societies as evidence for their critique of a capitalistic economy.To achieve the first task they actively used rhetoric borrowed from the natural sciences, and especially from biology as well as from economic theories that were another social science also striving for a more rigorous positivism. For the second task they turned to the rhetoric of political economy and used arguments based on a dialectical opposition between commodity exchange and gift exchange. The most prominent example of such dialectical rhetoric is in the works of Chris Gregory and Karl Polanyi in which gift exchange was interpreted as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to capitalistic commodity exchange. Because the rhetoric of economic anthropology from its inception to the present has been profoundly influenced by the language of general economic theory, the article examines the genesis of the rhetoric of economics as a science. This leads to an analysis of how the language of economics was affected by the rhetoric of the natural sciences, then of psychology and finally of law.

Download Full-text

Commodity Exchange-Traded Funds

10.1093/oso/9780190656010.003.0013 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Milliken

Keyword(s):

Portfolio Diversification ◽

Futures Contracts ◽

Spot Price ◽

Exchange Traded Funds ◽

Investment Strategies ◽

Regulatory Structure ◽

Commodity Exchange ◽

Asset Class ◽

Exchange Traded Fund

Commodity exchange-traded funds (ETCs), which debuted in 2004, enable investors to access an asset class previously difficult or expensive to access. Although a small segment of the overall exchange-traded fund (ETF) universe, ETCs have grown in popularity with both speculators and investors looking for long-term portfolio diversification. Examples of the types of commodities that are now accessible through ETCs include gold, oil, and agricultural. The literature on ETCs is limited, but academic and industry work has centered on using futures contracts to replicate the performance of the underlying commodities spot price as well as the effect additional capital has had on the integrity of the futures market. This chapter covers this topic by reviewing the growth, investment strategies, and regulatory structure of ETCs as well as the underlying effects these funds have had on the underlying markets with which they engage.

Download Full-text

The present significance of commodity exchange trading in the conditions of the current world economy

Agricultural Economics (Zemědělská ekonomika) ◽

10.17221/5056-agricecon ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 52 (No. 11) ◽

pp. 497-502

Author(s):

O. Rejnuš

Keyword(s):

Capital Market ◽

World Economy ◽

Commodity Markets ◽

Financial Resources ◽

Real Economy ◽

Financial Instruments ◽

Commodity Exchange ◽

Financial Investment ◽

To Come ◽

Near Future

The paper discusses the importance of commodity exchange trading while placing a special emphasis on the increasingly close interconnection between commodity markets and financial instruments markets. The aim of the paper is to prove that at present, commodity markets cannot be seen as strictly separate from markets trading in financial instruments, as there are increasingly close links between the two, which effectively lead to the transfer of financial resources invested in the financial market into the real economy. The paper analyses the most significant ties that already exist between the commodities and financial investment instruments in the financial and capital market, as well as the links that are very likely to come into existence in the near future. In the concluding part, there is a summary of the reasons that will necessarily lead to a further world-wide development of commodity exchange trading and a prediction of the lines along which this development is likely to take place.

Download Full-text