Recent increases in the price of crude oil have led to a rise in the prominence of corn-based ethanol as an alternative source of energy. As a result linkages have been established between commodity and energy prices. The aim of this study is to determine if soybeans, corn, wheat, oil, and...

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

Recent spikes in commodity prices have led to higher margin amounts and option premiums. For the most part, producers have always attributed their lack of use in reducing risk via futures and options markets to the high cost associated with the use of these markets. This study determines the...

This paper investigates the dynamics of sequential decision-making in agricultural futures and options markets using a quantile regression framework. Analysis of trading records of 12 traders suggests that there is great heterogeneity in individual trading behavior. Traders respond differently...

Hedging effectiveness is the proportion of price risk removed through hedging. Empirical hedging studies typically estimate a set of risk minimizing hedge ratios, estimate the hedging effectiveness statistic, apply the estimated hedge ratios to a second group of data, and examine the robustness...

The first step towards forecasting the price and output of the cattle industry is understanding the dynamics of the livestock production process. This study follows up on the Weimar and Stillman (1990) paper by using data from 1970 to 2005 to estimate the parameters that characterizes the cattle...

This paper investigates whether the accuracy of outlook hog price forecasts can be improved using composite forecasts in an out-of-sample context. Price forecasts from four wellrecognized outlook programs are combined with futures-based forecasts, ARIMA, and unrestricted Vector Autoregressive...

Corn and wheat cash prices in Kansas are affected by a number of local supply-demand, market structure, transportation access and other factors. Kansas corn prices in 2008 were affected by form of business organization, local feedgrain production and livestock feed usage, elevator storage...

This study examines the systematic risk present in major crops for the United States and three corn-belt states. An index of commodities is used in conjunction with cash receipts to generate dynamic estimates of the systematic risk for each crop and state. In our study, we find that beta...