The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the accuracy of outlook forecasts relative to futures prices in hog and cattle markets. Published forecasts from four prominent livestock outlook programs are available for analysis. Most of the series begin in the mid- to...

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether smoothing in USDA corn and soybean production forecasts is concentrated in years with relatively small and large crops. The sample consists of all USDA corn and soybean production forecasts released over the 1970 through 2006 crop years. Results...

This paper investigates the impact of USDA crop production reports in corn and soybean futures markets. The analysis is based on all corn and soybean production reports released over 1970-2006. The empirical analysis compares the typical OLS event study approach to the new Identification by...

The forecasting ability of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitment’s of Traders data set is investigated. Bivariate Granger causality tests show very little evidence that traders’ positions are useful in forecasting (leading) market returns. However, there is substantial...

We re-assess the effect of new information contained in the Hogs and Pigs Reports (HPR) focusing on the rationality of the announcements. We find that HPR preliminary numbers are irrational estimates of the final numbers and market expectations before the announcements are also irrational...