EcoModities™: Quantitative Modeling of Sustainability-Driven Regime Shifts in Futures Markets
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51137/wrp.ijsbe.627Keywords:
EcoModities, ESG, Sustainability-Driven Regime Shifts, HMM, GARCH-XAbstract
This paper introduces EcoModities™, a quantitative framework designed to identify and model sustainability-driven regime shifts in global commodity futures markets. The approach integrates Hidden Markov Models (HMM) and GARCH-X specifications augmented with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indicators to capture the evolving interaction between ecological pressures and market dynamics. Using a multi-commodity dataset spanning major agricultural and energy contracts, the analysis documents statistically significant regime transitions associated with sustainability shocks, with observable effects on volatility persistence, cross-asset correlations, and tail risk behavior. The proposed EcoModities Index (EMX) provides a synthetic measure of sustainability-linked market stress and improves the interpretability of regime classification across heterogeneous commodity groups. Overall, the findings support the view that sustainability factors have become an endogenous and measurable component of commodity market structure, with relevant implications for risk management, portfolio allocation, and policy monitoring in transition-sensitive markets.
References
Awudu, A., & Zhang, J. (2012). The impact of environmental shocks on agricultural commodity prices. Agricultural Economics, 43(2), 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-0862.2012.00576.x
Bastianin, A., & Galeotti, M. (2022). Sustainable commodity finance: Risk premia, volatility, and policy implications. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 110, 102556. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102556
Busch, T., Johnson, M., & Pioch, T. (2023). ESG regulation and capital allocation in commodity markets: Evidence from sustainable-finance policies. Finance Research Letters, 53, 104873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2023.104873
Coqueret, G., Kosenko, V., & Mariani, M. (2025). ESG integration and volatility modelling in commodity markets. Energy Economics, 131, 106845. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.106845
FAO. (2023). FAOSTAT database. https://www.fao.org/faostat
Goyal, A. (2024). Climate-related disasters and systemic volatility in global commodity markets. Journal of Commodity Markets, 36, 100321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomm.2023.100321
IEA. (2023). Renewables and energy policy indicators. https://www.iea.org
ILO. (2023). Labor risk indicators database. https://www.ilo.org
Le, H., & Sarkar, S. (2022). ESG investing and global commodity-market dynamics. Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, 12(3), 765–784. https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2021.1880015
Ma, X. (2024). Climate extremes and volatility regime shifts in agricultural futures. Agricultural Finance Review, 84(2), 275–298. https://doi.org/10.1108/AFR-05-2023-0089
Mahmoud, M., & Apergis, N. (2024). Environmental stress and volatility persistence in soft-commodity markets. Energy Economics, 125, 106679. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2023.106679
NASA MODIS. (2023). Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov
NOAA CPC. (2023). Drought Severity Index. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov
OECD. (2023). Environmental policy stringency database. https://www.oecd.org
Pellegrino, F. (2024). Weather anomalies and the dynamics of commodity-price volatility. Environmental Research Letters, 19(4), 045009. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad2f55
UN. (2023). ESG policy database. https://www.un.org
Wang, J., Li, Z., & Chan, K. (2024). Environmental policy uncertainty and regime switching in crude oil markets. Energy Policy, 180, 113658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113658
Zhang, Y., Torres, M., & Reinders, J. (2023). ESG determinants of volatility regimes in global energy futures. Resources Policy, 82, 103595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2023.103595
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Luca Enrico Mattei (Author)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.