An understanding of changes in price volatility is of value to policy makers and exchange committee members as well as other participants in commodity futures markets. Previous research has studied volatility by measuring: 1) the flow of new information into the market, or 2) the effect that the...

The lean hog futures contract is replacing the live hog futures contract at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange beginning with the February 1997 contract. The lean hog futures will be cash settled based on a broad-based lean hog price index, eliminating terminal markets from the price discovery...

The distributional behavior for futures price spread changes is examined through parametric and nonparametric tests on four different commodities: corn and live cattle, and gold and T-bonds with two different sample sizes. Data are examined for selected periods, stable (1992) and unstable...