Expectations about future economic conditions are important determinants of commodity prices. This paper presents a relatively simple model that makes futures prices for corn a function of expected production and inventories and of variables that account for demand shifts. The intent is to...

The empirical evidence in this paper supports the existence of seasonality, time-to-maturity, and long-memory effects in the volatility of prices, but not in the returns themselves, in corn and soybean futures markets. This volatility is modeled as an Orenstein-Ulenbeck process driven by...

Descriptive statistics and time-series econometric models are used to characterize the behavior of monthly fluid milk prices. Prices in April, May and June appear to be more variable than those in subsequent months, and the spring-time prices are perhaps skewed. Econometric models can capture...

A rational expectations storage model is used to simulate monthly corn prices, which are used to evaluate marketing strategies to manage price risk. The data are generated and analyzed in two formats: for long-run outcomes over 10,000 "years" of monthly prices and for 10,000 cases of 40-year...

The choice of deflators of commodity prices can change the time-series properties of the original series. This is a specific application of the general phenomenon that various kinds of data transformations can create spurious cycles that did not exist in the original data. Different empirical...

Endogenous variables in structural models of agricultural commodity markets are typically treated as stationary. Yet, tests for unit roots have rather frequently implied that commodity prices are not stationary. This seeming inconsistency is investigated by focusing on alternative specifications...