Even though commodity pricing models have been successful in fitting the term structure of futures prices and its dynamics, they do not generate accurate true distributions of spot prices. This paper develops a new approach to calibrate these models using not only observations of oil futures...

We use variance decompositions from high-dimensional vector autoregressions to characterize connectedness in 19 key commodity return volatilities, 2011-2016. We study both static (full-sample) and dynamic (rolling-sample) connectedness. We summarize and visualize the results using tools from...

Macroprudential policy holds the promise of becoming a powerful tool for preventing financial crises. Financial amplification in response to domestic shocks or global spillovers and pecuniary externalities caused by Fisherian collateral constraints provide a sound theoretical foundation for this...

Shadow bank market share in residential mortgage origination nearly doubled from 2007-2015, with particularly dramatic growth among online “fintech” lenders. We study how two forces, regulatory differences and technological advantages, contributed to this growth. Difference in difference...

The search for microeconomic foundations of non-Walrasian outcomes in labor and product markets has spawned many studies of contracting. This paper emphasizes the role of contracts for market equilibrium -- for many raw materials and basic industrial commodities -- in which long-term contractual...

This paper examines product markets in which long-term contracts and spot transactions coexist. Such markets are characterized by "multiple-price systems," wherein adjustment to supply and demand shocks occurs through spot prices, while contract prices are fixed, or adjust slowly. We derive the...

This paper tests and confirms the existence of a puzzling phenomenon - the prices of largely unrelated raw commodities have a persistent tendency to move together. We show that this comovement of prices is well in excess of anything that can be explained by the common effects of past, current,...

The idea that wages rise relative to alternatives as job seniority accumulates is the foundation of the theory of specific human capital, as well as other widely accepted theories of compensation. The fact that persons with longer job tenures typically earn higher wages tends to support these...

Recent experience has given rise to the financialization view: increased trading in commodity fu­tures markets leads to an increase in the level and volatility of spot prices. We construct a large panel data set which includes commodities with and without futures markets. The data do not...

This paper analyzes a novel data set of commodity futures prices over a long sample period starting in 1877, which allows us to shed new light on several important and controversial questions. We document that commodity futures returns (1) have been positive on average; (2) vary significantly...