How important is the commodity supercycle?

Abstract

World commodity prices are known to display long cycles. These cycles have a periodicity of 20 to 30 years and are called commodityprice supercycles. Figure 1 displays the time paths of eleven commodity prices deflated by the U.S. consumer price index over the period 1960 to 2018. All commodity prices appear to have long cycles in accordance with the supercycle hypothesis. In particular, commodity prices display two peaks post 1960—one in the early 1980s and one in the early 2010s. In the academic and financial-industry literature, the upswing in commodity prices leading to the 1980s peak is typically attributed to the post-World War II reconstruction of Western Europe and Japan and to the cartelization of the crude oil market. The peak in the early 2010s is frequently attributed to the accession of China and other southeast Asian countries to world markets.