We apply a new Bayesian approach to multiple-contract futures data. It allows the volatility of futures prices to depend upon physical inventories and the contract's time to delivery - and it allows those parametric effects to vary over time. We find a time-varying negative relationship between...

This paper analyzes the effects of waterway transportation costs on the spatial distribution of corn prices at U.S. grain markets. Interregional trade theory predicts that in a competitive market price differences between markets are explained by transportation cost. The precise role played by...

U.S. ethanol production capacity increased more than threefold between 2002 and 2008. We study the effect of this growth on corn acreage. Connecting annual changes in county-level corn acreage to changes in ethanol plant capacities, we find a positive effect on planted corn. The building of a...

This book is a study of the ways in which U.S. agriculture policies contribute to or help to ameliorate the adverse effects of farming on the environment.

In 2004, Congress ended the sixty-six-year-old federal tobacco program, effectively deregulating production and prices. With deregulation came a buyout package, with cigarette manufacturers agreeing to pay more than $3 billion in present value to quota owners and farmers. While the dollar values...

We develop a new event-study technique, the distributional event response model (DERM), appropriate to relatively slowly evolving information events. We apply the model to twelve years of daily lumber futures prices and analyze the effects of three different types of information releases: ("a")...

With 16 years of daily lumber futures prices, we study the effects of different types of information releases: (1) monthly housing starts estimates, (2) aperiodic administrative and judicial announcements about U.S.-Canada trade disputes, and (3) novel and unprecedented court decisions related...