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

Using 1971-2000 data, we examine the accuracy of corn and soybean production forecasts provided by the USDA and two private services. All agencies improved their forecasts as the harvest progressed, and forecast errors across the agencies were highly correlated. Relative accuracy varied by crop...

The purpose of this research bulletin is to summarize the pricing performance of professional market advisory services for the 1995-2000 corn and soybean crops. The pricing performance results over 1995-2000 suggest several key findings. First, advisory programs in corn do not consistently beat...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of agricultural market advisory services in marketing wheat. Two key performance questions are addressed: 1) Do market advisory services, on average, outperform an appropriate wheat market benchmark? and 2) Do market advisory services...

Professional market advisory services provide specific advice (advisory programs) to grain producers on how to market their commodities, and assist them in their efforts to manage price risk. Previous studies analyzed the effectiveness of individual services and could find only weak evidence...

A Bayesian hierarchical approach is employed to estimate individual expected performance of agricultural market advisory services. Skeptical beliefs based on market efficiency are incorporated as prior information. For a skeptical decision maker who is willing to follow an advisory program only...

This article develops measures of marketing style for advisory programs in corn and soybeans and estimates the relationship between style characteristics and pricing performance. Style is measured by the intensity of futures and options use, degree of activeness in marketing, and seasonality of...

This article uses Nordhaus' framework to determine the efficiency of the revision process for USDA corn and soybean production forecasts over the 1970/1971 through 2004/2005 marketing years. Positive autocorrelation and consistency of directional changes in forecast revisions suggest these...