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Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the relationships between the prices of biodiesel, ethanol
and related fuels and agricultural commodities with a use of minimal spanning trees and hierarchical trees. To distinguish between short-term and medium-term effects, we construct these trees for different frequencies (weekly and monthly). We find that in short-term, both ethanol and
biodiesel are very weakly connected with the other commodities. In medium-term, the biofuels network becomes more structured. The system splits into two well separated branches – a fuels part and a food part. Biodiesel tends to the fuels branch and ethanol to the food branch. As a part
of this paper we also characterize the major biofuels and their agricultural feedstock and we outline their recent quantitative development.