Captive supplies have been a contentious issue in the livestock industry for fifteen years and the subject of both theoretical and empirical research. In 2001, mandatory price reporting was implemented. One objective by its proponents was to increase the amount of information available on...

The optimal hedging model has become the standard theoretical model of normative hedging behavior due to its intuitive tradeoff of expected return with risk, its effcient use of information and its easy implementation. In practice, the model can be easily implemented with the Parameter Certainty...

The effectiveness of the Class III Milk futures market is analyzed in terms of the reduction in Value-at-Risk (VaR) for milk producers located in four regions: Wisconsin, Northeast, Florida and California. Constant hedge ratios are estimated using Myers and Thompson's (1989) generalized...

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....

This study investigates the relationship between cash and futures prices in the Brazilian agricultural market, focusing on the effects of trading activity on the price discovery mechanism of futures markets. The results are mixed, but several points begin to emerge. In general, higher trading...

Hedgers located far from organized commodity exchanges suffer the mismatch between their local prices and exchange prices. Futures and options traded on the exchange may still be valuable to distant hedgers but only to the extent that basis risk is small. Forward contracting allows hedgers to...

The economic value of public situation and outlook information has long been a subject of debate. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic value of USDA WASDE reports in corn and soybean markets. The investigation is based on event study analysis, with the "events" consisting of...

Financial research indicates that several firm characteristics are related to the use of derivatives. Less attention has been paid to the role of the characteristics of managers, which are particularly important when studying derivative usage of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). In this...

Practioners Abstract: Returns to managed futures funds and Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) have decreased dramatically during the last several years. Since these funds overwhelmingly use technical analysis, this research examines futures prices to determine if there is evidence of a structural...