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Abstract：
The commodity market super-cycle and food price crisis have been associated with rampant food insecurity and the Arab spring. A multitude of factors were identified as culprits for excessive volatility on the commodity markets. However, as it regards fertilizers, a clear attribution of market drivers explaining the emergence of extreme price events is still missing. In this paper, we provide a quantitative assessment of the price spike of the global phosphorus fertilizer market in 2008 focusing on diammonium phosphate (DAP). We find that fertilizer market policies in India, the largest global importer of phosphorus fertilizers and phosphate rock, turned out to be a major contributor to the global price spike. India doubled its import of P-fertilizer in 2008 at a time when prices doubled. The analysis of a wide set of factors pertinent to the 2008 price spike in phosphorus fertilizer market leads us to the discovery of a price spike magnification and triggering mechanisms. We find that the price spike was magnified on the one hand by protective trade measures of fertilizer suppliers leading to a 19% drop in global phosphate fertilizer export. On the other hand, the Indian fertilizer subsidy scheme led to farmers not adjusting their demand for fertilizer. The triggering mechanism appeared to be the Indian production outage of P-fertilizer resulting in the additional import demand for DAP in size of about 20% of annual global supply. The main conclusion is that these three factors have jointly caused the spike, underscoring the need for ex ante improvements in fertilizer market regulation on both national and international levels.
摘要：
大宗商品市场超级周期和粮食价格危机与猖獗的粮食不安全和阿拉伯之春有关。许多因素被确定为商品市场过度波动的罪魁祸首。然而,至于肥料，解释极端价格事件出现的市场驱动因素的明确归属仍然缺失。在本文中,我们对2008年全球磷肥市场的价格飙升进行了定量评估，重点是磷酸二铵（DAP）。我们发现印度的化肥市场政策，磷肥和磷矿的全球最大进口国，事实证明，这是全球价格飙升的主要原因。2008年，当价格翻了一番时，印度的磷肥进口量翻了一番。通过对与2008年磷肥市场价格飙升相关的一系列广泛因素的分析，我们发现了价格飙升的放大倍数和触发机制。我们发现，一方面由于化肥供应商的保护性贸易措施导致全球磷肥出口下降19％，价格飙升被放大。另一方面,印度的化肥补贴计划导致农民没有调整他们对化肥的需求。触发机制似乎是印度磷肥的生产中断，导致DAP的额外进口需求约占全球年供应量的20％。主要结论是，这三个因素共同导致了尖峰，强调需要在国家和国际层面上事先改善肥料市场监管。
