On November 9, 2010, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago held a conference on rural development and the role of midwestern agriculture. Experts from academia, industry and policy institutions, including U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen A. Merrigan, discussed rural...

Cash and futures prices should reach equality, or converge, upon contract maturity. Traders can impose convergence during the delivery month througharbitrage behavior: either making or taking delivery on futures contracts. If convergence is not predictable, a futures market fails to provide a...

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