The lean hog futures contract is replacing the live hog futures contract at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange beginning with the February 1997 contract. The lean hog futures will be cash settled based on a broad-based lean hog price index, eliminating terminal markets from the price discovery...

The focus of this study is the habitual speculator in commodity futures markets. The speculator's activity broadens a market, creates essential liquidity, and performs an irreplaceable pricing function. Working knowledge of the profiles and motivations of habitual speculators is essential to...

The distributional behavior for futures price spread changes is examined through parametric and nonparametric tests on four different commodities: corn and live cattle, and gold and T-bonds with two different sample sizes. Data are examined for selected periods, stable (1992) and unstable...

The use of crop yield futures contracts is examined. The expectation being modeled here reflects that of an Illinois corn and soybeans producer at planting, of revenue realized at harvest. The effects of using price and crop yield contracts are measured by comparing the results of the expected...

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...