Two nonparametric tests are employed to investigate the potential information value of USDA crop and livestock reports. If daily returns on days that reports are released (announcement days) differ when compared to non-announcement days for a sizeable number of commodities from a set of seven...

This paper investigates the informational value of USDA crop progress and condition information by analyzing reactions of corn and soybean futures markets from 1986 to 2012. Results show significant differences between close-to-open return variabilities on report-release trading days and pre-...

Ocean acidification has the potential to adversely affect a number of valuable marine ecosystem services by making it more difficult, and eventually impossible, for many marine organisms to form shells and skeletons. Reef-forming corals, commercially valuable shellfish, and primary producers...

The impacts of agritourism on farm profitability are poorly understood. Using Census of Agriculture records, we employ propensity score matching to estimate the effects of agritourism on the net cash income per acre of New Jersey farms. We find that agritourism has statistically significant and...

The value of USDA reports has long been a question of interest for researchers and practitioners. However, the impact of announcements on comovements across related commodity prices has not been explored beyond financial asset markets. This is important because the structure of the relationship...

Futures markets have two main goals: price discovery and risk management. Because management decisions often have to be made on a time horizon longer than the time until expiration of the nearby futures contract, it is important to determine how well distant-delivery futures contracts are able...

The informational content in live cattle and hog deferred futures prices is assessed using a direct test of incremental forecast ability for two- to twelve-month horizons. For 1976-2007, the results indicate that hog futures prices add incremental information at all horizons, but unique...

We analyze the determinants of daily futures price volatility in corn, soybeans, wheat, and oats markets from 1986 to 2007. Combining the information from simultaneously traded contracts, a generalized least squares method is implemented that allows us to clearly distinguish among...

Because requisite micro data frequently are unavailable, it is common practice to use aggregate data to estimate economic relationships representing the behavior of individual agents. A substantial body of literature has examined conditions under which inferences between micro and aggregate...