This research presents a systematic and unified approach to evaluating forecast rationality that considers the potential of nonstationarity in forecasts and realized values. The approach is applied to one-quarter ahead U.S. Department of Agriculture livestock price forecasts from 1982 through...

Conditional efficiency or forecast encompassing is tested among alternative pork production forecasts using the method proposed by Harvey and Newbold. One-, two-, and three-quarter ahead pork production forecasts made by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the University of...

A battery of time series methods are compared for forecasting basis levels in the soybean futures complex: soybeans, soybean meal, and soybean oil. Specifically, nearby basis forecasts are generated with exponential smoothing techniques, autoregression moving average (ARMA), and vector...

Economists and others need estimates of future cash price volatility to use in risk management evaluation and education programs. This paper evaluates the performance of alternative volatility forecasts for fed cattle, feeder cattle, and corn cash price returns. Forecasts include time series...

Consumer product manufacturers often compete in dynamic, multi-firm oligopolies using multiple strategic tools. While existing empirical models of strategic interaction typically consider only parts of the more general problem, this paper presents a more comprehensive alternative. Marketing...

In August 1994, the Secretary of Agriculture announced the termination of the marketing order and the association flow-to-market, or prorate, controls for fresh California and Arizona (CA/AZ) lemons. Lemon growers and handlers have expressed concern over the impact of this decision on retail-FOB...

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) tariffs on U.S. potato imports to Mexico were phased out by 1993. Citing phytosanitary issues, in 1996, the Mexican government placed quantitative restrictions on U.S. potato imports and restricted their import only to designated border...

Considerable evidence exists of high returns to public and private investment in commodity research and development programs. This study investigates the potential returns to product research, development, and marketing in a dynamic commodity-market model. Theoretical hypotheses derived from the...

Investing in a new perennial crop variety involves an irreversible commitment of capital and generates an uncertain return stream. As a result, the decision to adopt a new variety includes a significant real option value. Waiting for returns to rise above this real option causes a delay in...

"Commodity promotion" consists of many activities, each designed to contribute to a consumer's product knowledge or influence tastes. However, both knowledge and tastes are unobservable, or latent, variables influencing demand. This paper specifies a dynamic structural model of fresh fruit...