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I am looking to pursue a PhD in Finance, and one of my research interests is commodity markets. Unfortunately, I have seen little academic work on this set of topics. I wanted to see if anyone here knew if/where such research was being done in finance departments.

Have a look at the Commodity Finance Center in Birkbeck College, London, as well as the papers by H. Geman and others.

Hi,I recommend also reading the papers by Clewlow & Strickland.Other academics to look up include Eduardo Schwartz and Michael Dempster.

Antonio - Interesting research group. I looked over some of the work being done and hit SSRN, and it's the type of material that I'm looking to work on (Geman's work on electricity prices was quite intriguing). I also noticed their degree program - similar to what I'm looking for, but a bit out of my neck of the woods (US). ahew - Thanks for the pointers. Clewlow and Strickland have some very interesting stuff on energy options which has just been added to my reading list. Also, thanks for the reference to Schwartz. For some reason, I didn't have UCLA on my list of departments (chalking that up to lack of caffeine), and it appears that they are quite active in this area.

If you're interested inc ommodities with a view to working in it one day for a bank (rather than a university), and have a decent undergrad degree with maybe a Master's, you would be strongly advised to go out, buy a couple of books on commodities, read them, and get yourself a job in commodities now. It looks to me much the same as credit derivatives in about 2001 - jump on the bandwagon while it's still small and you have a chance to make a name for yourself

http://www.ace.uiuc.edu/ofor/ University of Illinois Dept of Agricultural and consumer Economics. check out the research / workng papers section

The March/April 2006 edition of the Financial Analysts Journal (FAJ) has a number of commodities research articles from academics including Campbell Harvey, Robert Faff and Geert Rouwerhorst.