In 2003, trading of commodity futures shifted from single commodity, regional exchanges to national exchanges that trade multiple commodities. This paper examines price discovery and hedging effectiveness of commodity futures after this change and concludes that, on average, futures prices do discover information relatively efficiently, but helps to manage risk less efficiently. The paper uses the viewpoint of the hedger to conjecture what factors may improve hedging effectiveness. These include high settlement costs caused by few and widely dispersed delivery centers and an unreliability of warehouse receipts, a mismatch between the grade specified in the futures contract and what is available for delivery in the market, and disruptions caused by various policy interventions in both commodities spot and futures markets.

Citation: Do futures markets help in price discovery and risk management for commodities in India?, Nidhi Aggarwal, Sargam Jain, Susan Thomas. IGIDR Working Paper WP-2014-020, June 2014.