This study uses quantile regressions to estimate historical forecast error distributions forWASDE forecasts of corn, soybean, and wheat prices, and then compute confidencelimits for the forecasts based on the empirical distributions. Quantile regressions with fiterrors expressed as a function of...

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 address two basic performance questions for market advisory services: 1) Do market advisory services, on average, outperform an appropriate market benchmark? and 2) Do market advisory services exhibit persistence in their performance from year-to-year? Data on...

The purpose of this research report is to present an evaluation of advisory service pricing performance in the 1999 crop year for wheat. Specifically, the average price received by a subscriber to an advisory service is calculated for wheat crop harvested in 1999. The average net advisory price...

The purpose of this report is to improve understanding of USDA crop forecasting methods, performance and market impact. A review of USDA's forecasting procedures and methodology confirmed the objectivity and consistency of the forecasting process over time. No changes in methodology occurred in...

The purpose of this research report is to evaluate the pricing performance of market advisory services for the 1995-2000 corn and soybean crops. Certain explicit assumptions are made to produce a consistent and comparable set of results across the different advisory programs. These assumptions...

The purpose of this research report is to identify the appropriate market benchmark price to use to evaluate the pricing performance of market advisory services that are included in the annual AgMAS pricing performance evaluations. Five desirable properties of market benchmark prices are...

The purpose of this research report is to present an evaluation of advisory service pricing performance in the 1999 crop year for corn and soybeans. Specifically, the average price received by a subscriber to an advisory service is calculated for corn and soybean crops harvested in 1999. The...

The purpose of this research report is to evaluate the pricing performance of market advisory services for the 1995-2003 corn and soybean crops. Four basic indicators of performance are applied to advisory program prices and revenues over 1995-2003. Test results provide little evidence that...

The purpose of this research report is to evaluate the pricing performance of market advisory services for the 1995-2001 corn and soybean crops. The results for 1995-2000 were released in earlier AgMAS research reports, while results for the 2001 crop year are new.Certain explicit assumptions...