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Early warning on price volatility

General documentation

The tools presented in this section provide a visual representation of historical periods of excessive global price volatility from 2000-present, as well as a daily volatility status. This status can alert policymakers when world markets are experiencing a period of excessive food price volatility; this information can then be used to determine appropriate country-level food security responses, such as the release of physical food stocks.

A time period of excessive price volatility: a period of time characterized by extreme price variation (volatility) is a period of time in which we observe alarge number of extreme positive returns. An extreme positive return is defined to be a return that exceeds a certain preestablished threshold. This threshold is normally taken to be a high order (95 or 99%) conditional quantile, (i.e. a value of return that is exceeded with low probability: 5 or 1%). In this model, we are using the 95% quantile and look at time in 60-day increments.

Source: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI): Excessive Food Price Variability Early Warning System

Data Sources: Chicago Mercantile Exchange and DTN

Full documentation (external link)

Other Commodity Price Variability Tools (external links):