The present value model relates an asset's price to the sum of its discounted expected future payoffs. I explore the limits of the model by testing its ability to explain the pricing of storable commodities. For commodities the payoff stream is the convenience yield that accrues from holding...

This paper examines product markets in which long-term contracts and spot transactions coexist. Such markets are characterized by "multiple-price systems," wherein adjustment to supply and demand shocks occurs through spot prices, while contract prices are fixed, or adjust slowly. We derive the...

The classical theory of commodity price determination integrates myopic supply and demand on the one hand with competitive storage (speculation) under rational expectations on the other. Taking into account the fact that inventories mist; be non-negative, this paper derives from the theory...

The idea that wages rise relative to alternatives as job seniority accumulates is the foundation of the theory of specific human capital, as well as other widely accepted theories of compensation. The fact that persons with longer job tenures typically earn higher wages tends to support these...

This paper tests and confirms the existence of a puzzling phenomenon - the prices of largely unrelated raw commodities have a persistent tendency to move together. We show that this comovement of prices is well in excess of anything that can be explained by the common effects of past, current,...

Understanding the behavior of real interest rates is a central issue in monetary/macro economics. Recently researchers have begun to use futures market data to examine real interest rate behavior. Futures market data can be used to directly construct own-commodity real interest rates ? i.e., the...

Commodity futures risk premiums vary across commodities and over time depending on the level of physical inventories, as predicted by the Theory of Storage. Using a comprehensive dataset on 31 commodity futures and physical inventories between 1969 and 2006, we show that the convenience yield is...

High and volatile prices of major commodities have generated a wide array of analyses and policy prescriptions, including influential studies identifying price bubbles in periods of high volatility. Here we consider a model of the market for a storable commodity in which price expectations are...

This paper develops a model to analyze information aggregation in commodity markets. Through centralized trading, commodity prices aggregate dispersed information about the strength of the global economy among goods producers whose production has complementarity, and serve as price signals to...

This paper analyzes the joint responses of commodity futures prices and traders' futures positions to changes in the VIX before and after the recent financial crisis. We find that while financial traders accommodate the needs of commercial hedgers in normal times, in times of distress, financial...