The USDA WASDE (World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates) price forecasts are published in the form of an interval, but typically analyzed as point estimates. Thus, all information about uncertainty imbedded in the forecast is ignored. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the accuracy...

The economic value of public situation and outlook information has long been a subject of debate. The purpose of this study is to investigate the economic value of USDA reports in hog and cattle markets. The investigation is based on event study analysis, with the "events" consisting of the...

This study suggests that confidence intervals for WASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices may be improved if they are estimated using an empirical approach. Empirical confidence intervals are calculated following Williams and Goodman's (1971) method and use historical forecast errors...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing performance of agricultural market advisory services in hogs. Pricing recommendations are available for all quarters from the beginning of 1995 through the end of 2001. The results show that average differences between advisory programs and...

While the risk premium hypothesis in futures markets has been the subject of a long and continuous controversy, the risk premium hypothesis in forward markets is also of interest among economists. The hypothesis is supported by some theoretical arguments and empirical evidence yet remains an...

This paper describes the degree of marketing activeness of market advisory programs for corn and soybeans, and analyzes the relationship between activeness degree and pricing performance. The data set employed consists of advisory programs tracked by the AgMAS Project at the University of...

This paper employs a Bayesian hierarchical approach to estimate individual expected performance of market advisory programs in corn and soybeans. This estimation procedure is a conservative approach compared to traditional estimation, since it reduces estimation error in the expected gains from...

In an effort to improve marketing of their products, many farmers use market advisory services (MAS). To date, there is only fragmented anecdotal information about how farmers actually use the recommendations of market advisory services in their marketing plans, and how they choose among these...

This study analyzes the potential risk reduction gains from naive diversification (equal-weighting) among market advisory services for corn and soybeans. The total possible decrease in risk through naive diversification is small, mainly because advisory prices are highly correlated on average....

Marketing is viewed as an important component of the farm management process, and poor marketing is often cited as a cause of low farm incomes. However, widespread beliefs about poor performance are not based upon a large body of research, and available evidence is too limited to make definitive...