ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the price of steel products in the US market. Steel prices are not driven by ‘spot’ trading, which makes steel unique compared with other metals, such as nickel and copper. It explains the data sources and empirical methodology. The chapter analyses the prices of five important steel products, these are: cold-rolled steel bars, cold-rolled steel strip, hot-rolled steel bars, hot-rolled steel sheet, and hot-rolled steel strip. The real exchange rates between the US dollar and both the Deutsche mark and the yen were indeed found to have statistically and quantitatively significant effects on the real dollar prices of the various steel products. The estimate of the elasticity with respect to the price of petroleum is very similar to the estimate for all steel products, but the elasticity with respect to automobile production again seems to be very high.
