This article tests the efficiency of the hog options market and assesses the impact of the 1996 contract redesign on efficiency. We find that the hog options market is efficient, but some options yielded excess returns during the live hogs period but not during the lean hogs period. Our findings...

We theoretically examine a farmer’s coverage demand with area and individual insurance plans as either separate or integrated options. The individual and area losses are assumed to be imperfectly and positively correlated. With actuarially fair rates, the farmer will fully insure with the...

This paper investigates the dynamics of sequential decision-making in agricultural futures andoptions markets using a quantile regression framework. Analysis of trading records of 12 traderssuggests that there is great heterogeneity in individual trading behavior. Traders responddifferently to...

We study the difference in the volatility dynamics of CBOT corn, soybeans, and oatsfutures prices across different delivery horizons via the smoothed Bayesian estimatorof Karali, Dorfman, and Thurman (2010). We show that the futures price volatilitiesin these markets are affected by the...

This study examines the systematic risk present in major crops for the United States andthree corn-belt states. An index of commodities is used in conjunction with cash receiptsto generate dynamic estimates of the systematic risk for each crop and state. In our study,we find that beta estimates...

Grain prices have risen sharply since 2005 and 2006 affecting livestock markets by increasingfeed prices and leading to significant volatility shocks. The high price levels and magnitude ofsustained high volatilities has raised concerns for many sectors of the economy, in particularthose with...

Taken together, studies that examine how well commodity futures marketsperform find that risk premiums are common—and so unbiasedness is not—and marketsare not uniformly efficient across commodities or forecast horizons. This large body ofresearch sheds important light on whether and to what...

Hedging effectiveness is the proportion of price risk removed through hedging. Empiricalhedging studies typically estimate a set of risk minimizing hedge ratios, estimate the hedgingeffectiveness statistic, apply the estimated hedge ratios to a second group of data, and examinethe robustness of...

The commodity bull cycle of 2006-2008 and subsequent dramatic price decline have been asource of hardship for traditional commodity market participants such as producers andmerchant/shippers. The usefulness of futures markets has been called into question, especiallygiven that some market...

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