Author(s)

Si Chen

Corresponding Author

Si Chen

ABSTRACT

Based on the composite price index and the prices of 7 agricultural commodity futures from March 2018 to October 2020, the event study method was adopted in this paper to study the impacts of China-US trade war on the agricultural commodity futures prices in China. Taking 5 negative events and 4 positive events of the China-US trade war as the examples, it was analyzed that how China's agricultural commodity futures prices were influenced according to various event natures and differences. The results of empirical analysis revealed the significant impacts of the China-US trade war on the futures prices of China's agricultural commodities. It was also found that the impacts of positive events were contrary to those of the negative eones. Besides, different agricultural commodities were influenced to varying degrees. That is, the composite price of agricultural commodity futures reacted passively to the negative events and actively to the positive ones. For the 7 futures, the impacts of positive events on the prices of No.1 soybean and soybean oil were weak, and to the impacts of negative events were even weaker. Although both soymeal and corn price were not significantly affected, the prices of strong gluten wheat, cotton and sugar were strongly influenced, which was consistent with the hypothesis and statistically significant. In this paper, theoretical study was conducted to draw relevant conclusions for people to understand the impacts of the China-US trade war on China's agricultural commodity futures prices, which contributes to deal with the adverse effects of the China-US trade war and maintain the order of agricultural market.

KEYWORDS

Event study method, the China-US trade war, agricultural commodity futures market