The first decade of the 21st century has perhaps witnessed more structural change in commodity futures markets than all previous decades combined. Not only have trading volumes and open interest increased markedly, but this time period also saw historic changes in both trading and participants....

The traditional necessary condition for futures market inefficiency is the existence of alternative forecasting methods that produce mean squared forecast errors smaller than the futures market. Here, a more exacting requirement for futures market efficiency is proposed-forecast encompassing....

Theoretical noise trader models suggest that uninformed traders can impact market prices. However, these models' conclusions depend crucially on the assumed specification for noise trader demand. This research seeks to empirically determine the appropriate demand specification for uninformed...

Mailbox milk prices from a representative dairy operation in Illinois are used to gauge the farm-level hedging effectiveness of Class III milk futures. The results indicate a hedge ratio of 0.85 can reduce price risk by over 90%. The importance of seasonal basis components is highlighted.

Development and organization of procurement strategies have escalated in importance with maturity of the food processing industry, as well as with the prospect of greater choice attributable to variety development and information technology. Conventional alternatives for procurement range from...