Drivers of wine production in the European Union: a macroeconomic perspective

Over the last decades, the European wine industry has been object of increased international competition, which has implications for the dynamics of wine production. This paper examines the underlying factors of wine production in the European Union (EU) from a macroeconomic perspective. We apply an expanded Cobb-Douglas production function, which includes monetary indicators. A dynamic panel data GMM approach along with pooled OLS and fixed effect model for the period from 1999-2014 are applied to estimate the model. We find a positive impact from labour, capital and wine export and a negative impact from interest rate to wine production; however, no robust and significant impact is observed from wine import as well as from inflation and exchange rates. Our results indicate that EU wine production is influenced by monetary policy, which could be a useful instrument for policy makers promoting wine production in this region.publishedVersio

The Role of Outliers and Oil Price Shocks on Volatility of Metal Prices

This study investigates the price volatility of metals, using the GARCH and GJR models. First we examine the persistence of volatility and the leverage effect across metal markets taking into account the presence of outliers, and second we estimate the effects of oil price shocks on the price volatility of metals, allowing for the asymmetric responses. We use daily spot prices for the selected metals, including aluminum, copper, lead, nickel, tin, zinc, gold, silver, palladium and platinum. The main findings indicate that, returns show a high degree of volatility persistence before and after correcting outliers, outliers bias the parameters estimation of the GARCH-type models, and removing outliers improves the performance of models in capturing volatility. However in a comparison, Student-t distribution outperforms the approach of correcting outliers in capturing volatility. Moreover, we find the existence of inverse leverage effect for seven metals, the leverage effect for copper and no leverage effect for nickel and palladium. Finally, price volatility of metals differently reacts to oil price shocks and there is an asymmetric reaction of volatility to oil price shocks for seven metals

How is Volatility in Commodity Markets Linked to Oil Price Shocks?

This study investigates the effects of oil price shocks on volatility of selected agricultural and metal commodities. To achieve this goal, we decompose an oil price shock to its underlying components, including macroeconomics and oil specific shocks. The applied methodology is the structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model and the time span is from April 1983 to December 2013. The investigation is divided into two subsamples, before and after 2006 for agricultures taking into account the 2006-2008 food crisis, and before and after 2008 for metals considering the recent global financial crisis. The validity of time divisions is confirmed by historical decomposition accomplishment. We find that, based on impulse response functions, the response of volatility of each commodity to an oil price shock differs significantly depending on the underlying cause of the shock for the both pre and post-crisis periods. moreover, according to variance decomposition the explanatory power of oil shocks becomes stronger after the crisis. The different responses of commodities are described in detail by investigating market characteristics in each period

Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development

This article develops the renewable energy and sustainable development theme, a topic that is much and much important since the problems that face the fossil fuels related to reserves exhaustions, the high price of new explorations and exploitations, the pollution levels and their impact on climate change (consequence of GHG emissions). Among the aims and objectives of this paper we discuss the renewal energies� adoption or investments and their implications on sustainable development.Este artículo desarrolla el tema de las energías renovables y el desarrollo sostenible, un tema que es cada vez más importante atendiendo a los problemas que los combustibles fósiles tienen que enfrentar y que se relacionan con el agotamiento de las reservas, el prohibitivo precio de las nuevas prospecciones y exploraciones, las poluciones y sus efectos o impacto en el cambio climático (consecuencia de las emisiones de gases con efecto invernadero). Entre otros objetivos de este artículo también se encuentra la discusión sobre la adopción de las energías renovables y sus implicaciones para el desarrollo sostenible

Financial Stress and Basis in Energy Markets

We investigate the relationship between energy commodities bases, inventory and financial stress from 1994 to 2018. We find that, from the 1998 Asian crisis the effect of financial stress on energy commodities bases gradually increased and from the 2008 crisis became positive, while the effect of inventory showed a gradual decline over time. The reactions of bases to changes in financial stress is nonlinear, as they are higher in the high financial stress periods. This is more profound in crude oil market than heating oil and natural gas. Moreover, the reactions of bases to the changes in inventory is nonlinear, as the reactions are lower when the inventory level is high confirming the theory of storage. We suggest that, in energy market, changes of inventory do not fully explain the variation of energy commodities bases, as the connection between commodity and financial markets increased during the recent years.peerReviewe