It is well documented that ‘‘unanticipated’’ information contained in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) crop reports induces large price reactions in corn and soybean markets. Thus, a natural question that arises from this literature is: To what extent are futures hedges...

During 2008 extreme price volatility in grain markets led to country elevators incurring unprecedentedly large margin calls on their futures hedges. As a result elevators’ traditional liquidity sources and lines of credit were stretched to breaking point. This article explores the...

Although Vector Autoregressive models are commonly used to forecast prices, specification of these models remains an issue. Questions that arise include choice of variables and lag length. This article examines the use of Forecast Error Variance Decompositions to guide the...

It is well documented that ‘‘unanticipated’’ information contained in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) crop reports induces large price reactions in corn and soybean markets. Thus, a natural question that arises from this literature is: To what extent are...

Participation rates by southern irrigated crop producers in most important crop insurance programs have been relatively low. This paper empirically examines why this may be the case in Arkansas, and proposes a novel “gross margin” product specifically targeted at meeting the needs of these...