Amid the rise in commodity investing that started in 2003, many have asked whether commodities now move more in sync with traditional financial assets. Using daily, weekly and monthly data from January 1991 through November 2008, we provide evidence largely to the contrary. First, we apply...

We identify and explain a structural change in the relation between crude oil futures prices across contract maturities. As recently as 2001, near- and long-dated futures were priced as though traded in segmented markets. In 2002, however, the prices of one-year futures started to move more in...

In settings characterized by imperfect information about an underlying state of nature, but where inferences are made sequentially and are publicly observable, decisions may yield a cascade in which everyone herds on a single choice. While cascades potentially play a role in a variety of...

We examine the effect of price limits on futures contracts where there exist options contracts on those futures that have no price limits. We establish that when options are trading, the futures price implied by put-call parity provides an accurate prediction of the unconstrained futures price....

Previous empirical studies of information cascades use either naturally occurring data or laboratory experiments with student subjects. We combine attractive elements from each of these lines of research by observing market professionals from the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in a controlled...

We test the prevalence, sources and effects of herding among large speculative traders in thirty U.S. futures markets over 2004-2009. Using unique U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) data identifying daily trader positions we compare herding among hedge funds and floor market...

Amidst a sharp rise in commodity investing, many have asked whether commodities nowadays move in sync with traditional financial assets. Using daily, weekly and monthly data, we provide evidence that challenges this idea. Applying dynamic correlation and recursive cointegration techniques, we...

An important class of investment decisions is characterized by unrecoverable sunk costs, resolution of uncertainty through time, and the ability to invest in the future as an alternative to investing today. The options model provides guidance in such settings, including an investment decision...

Previous empirical studies of information cascades use either naturally occurring data or laboratory experiments with student subjects. We combine attractive elements from each of these lines of research by observing market professionals from the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in a controlled...