This study develops a new and straightforward economic model of basis forecasting that outperforms the simple three-year average method suggested in much of the literature. We use monthly data of the corn basis in the Texas Triangle Area from February 1997 to July 2008. The results and the...

Uganda has had formal trade ties with Europe since 1973 when, together with several other commonwealth countries, it signed the Lomé Convention. However, trade relations between Europe and Africa started much earlier, in 1957, at first covering 18 francophone countries and six European...

This paper is a summary of some of the considerations involved in applying an existing model to a new problem, in particular in deciding whether to update or not, and some of the issues involved in interpreting the output from the new application. Thus where you start from does influence where...

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...