ABSTRACT
Academic coverage of the price reporting agencies (PRAs) and the benchmarks that they provide has been limited, with a few honourable exceptions. This relative lack of academic attention is a surprise when one considers how embedded the PRAs are within modern commodity trading and risk management systems. In most studies of commodities, academics have taken exchange-listed futures prices as a proxy for the entire commodity suite and have based their research accordingly, rather than looking at the benchmarks provided by PRAs or at the methodologies underpinning those assessments. A recurring theme in OIES studies has been the relationship between PRA assessments of the physical North Sea market and the Brent crude oil futures market. The central role played by the OIES in acting as a central hub for pricing research has ensured that the UK has tended to lead the way in terms of the academic study of pricing issues and PRAs.
