Volatility and dependence in crude oil and agricultural commodity markets

This paper studies the evolution, volatility dynamics, and nonlinear dynamics between crude oil prices and major agricultural commodity prices. Semiparametric GARCH-in-Mean copula models are applied to monthly crude oil, corn, soybean, palm oil, rice, sugar, and wheat prices from January 1990 to May 2023. We find that the Clayton copula is the best copula to describe the (bivariate) dependence structures between the crude oil and soybean, crude oil and palm oil, crude oil and sugar, and crude oil and wheat markets, suggesting the statistically significant lower tail dependence between crude oil and major agricultural commodity returns. Moreover, the tail dependence is strongest between crude oil and palm oil.