... interviews with dozens of academics and traders, and a review of hundreds of emails and other documents involving two highly visible professors in the commodities field — Mr. Pirrong and Professor Scott H. Irwin at the University of Illinois — show how major players on Wall Street and elsewhere have been aggressive in underwriting and promoting academic work.

 

The efforts by the financial players, the interviews show, are part of a sweeping campaign to beat back regulation and shape policies that affect the prices that people around the world pay for essentials like food, fuel and cotton.

 

Professors Pirrong and Irwin say that industry backing did not color their opinions. ...

 

No one disputes that a substantial portion of price increases in oil and food over the last decade were caused by fundamental market factors: increased demand from China and other industrializing countries, extreme weather, currency fluctuations and the diversion of grain to biofuel.

 

But so much speculative money poured into markets — from $13 billion in 2003 to $317 billion at a peak in 2008 — that many economists, and even some commodities traders and investment banks, say the flood became a factor of its own in distorting prices.