Commodity futures have long been used to facilitate risk management and inventory stabilization. The study of commodity futures prices has attracted much attention in the literature because they are highly volatile and because commodities represent a large proportion of the export value in many...

Economists who deal with time-series data usually take the unit root test as the ‘prerequisite’ test for a Brownian motion. It is typical for any researchers to apply a battery of well-known unit root tests to their models to confirm stationarity in the model specification. Nonetheless,...

Long memory, and more precisely fractionally integration, has been put forward as an explanation for the persistence of shocks in a number of economic time series data as well as to reconcile misleading findings of unit roots in data that should be stationary. Recent evidence suggests that long...

Default risk associated with forward contracts can be substantial, yet these financial instruments are widely used to hedge price risk. An objectively priced exit option on the forward contract would help reduce the likelihood of litigation associated with contract default. A method is proposed...

Commodity cash and futures prices have been rising steadily since 2006. As evidenced by the April 2008 Commodity Futures Trading Commission Agricultural Forum, there is much concern among traditional futures and options market participants that the usefulness of commodity derivatives has been...

Commodity and energy prices have exhibited an unprecedented increase between October 2006 and July 2008, only to fall sharply during the last months of 2008. Many explanations have been offered to this phenomenon, including steadily increasing demand from China and India, large mandated...

The commodity bull cycle of 2006-2008 and subsequent dramatic price decline have been asource of hardship for traditional commodity market participants such as producers andmerchant/shippers. The usefulness of futures markets has been called into question, especiallygiven that some market...

Pricing option contracts on electricity remains methodologically challenging, with a lack of clearly defined and robust methods. In particular, little is known about pricing options in Brazilian energy markets, despite their economic significance. Using weekly price data (R$/MWh) on four...