United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) livestock production forecasts are evaluated for their information content across multiple forecast horizons using the direct test developed by Vuchelen and Gutierrez (2005). Forecasts are explicitly tested for rationality (unbiased and efficient)...

The successful introduction of futures contracts to industries unfamiliar with futures markets is likely to become increasingly important as futures exchanges move to alternative governance structures (e.g., for-profit corporations), trading platforms evolve (i.e., electronic|Internet trading),...

This research examines the forecasting performance of implied volatility derived from nearby live cattle options contracts in predicting 1-week volatility of nearby live cattle futures prices. Forecast evaluation is conducted from the perspective of an agribusiness risk manager. The methodology...

Value-at-Risk, known as VaR, gives a prediction with a certain level of confidence of potential portfolio losses that may be encountered over a specified time period due to adverse price movements in the portfolio's assets. For example, a VaR of 1 million dollars at the 95% level of confidence...

Nonprice promotion has long been used by small firms or organizations to increase agricultural exports. Some believe that export promotion in these cases is often unsuccessful as the promoter is unable to achieve the “critical mass” of awareness that is required for success. The objective of...

Commodity marketing managers are demanding an increasingly detailed description of their customers in order to make more efficient use of their marketing budgets. This study uses a purchase-occasion, household panel data set to investigate consumers' discrete choice among varieties of apples and...

Americans are consuming more complex carbohydrate-based foods. This study applies a household production model to investigate the role of US households' demand for value-added and convenience, both defined as nonmarket commodities, in complex carbohydrate consumption. Empirical estimates of a...