A rational expectations storage model is used to simulate monthly corn prices, which are used to evaluate marketing strategies to manage price risk. The data are generated and analyzed in two formats: for long-run outcomes over 10,000 "years" of monthly prices and for 10,000 cases of 40-year...

The choice of deflators of commodity prices can change the time-series properties of the original series. This is a specific application of the general phenomenon that various kinds of data transformations can create spurious cycles that did not exist in the original data. Different empirical...

A rational expectations storage model is used to simulate monthly corn prices, which are used to evaluate marketing strategies to manage price risk. The data are generated and analyzed in two formats: for long-run outcomes over 10,000 "“years"” of monthly prices and for 10,000 cases of 40-year...

Organic soymilk has been one of the fastest growing products in the organic food sector in recent years. Due to the shortage of domestically grown organic soybeans, outsourcing became a practice in the industry. It was estimated by some industry insiders that about 50% of organic soybeans...

A rational expectations competitive storage model is applied to the U.S. corn market to assess the aptness of this framework in explaining monthly price behavior in an actual commodity market. Relative to previous models, extensive realism is added to the model in terms of how production...

Many governments try to stabilize commodity prices based on the widespread belief that households value price stability and that the poor especially benefit from food price stabilization. We derive an exact measure of multivariate price risk aversion and of associated household willingness to...

Entrepreneurship means making discrete changes in livelihood activities that involve substantial risks to income. While the rewards may be substantial, transactions costs may make decisions irreversible. This paper draws a comparison between entrepreneurship and technology adoption. Adopting a...

A general theory is developed to analyze the efficiency and income distribution effects of a biofuel consumer tax credit and the interaction effects with a price contingent farm subsidy. Using the U.S. ethanol market as a stylized example, ethanol prices rise above the gasoline price by the...

This paper analyzes the impact of an ethanol import tariff in conjunction with a consumption mandate and tax credit. A tax credit alone acts as a subsidy to ethanol producers, equally benefiting exporters like Brazil. If an import tariff is imposed to offset the tax credit, world prices of...

Economists attribute many common behaviors to risk aversion and frequently focus on how wealth moderates risk preferences. This paper highlights a problem associated with empirical tests of the relationship between wealth and risk aversion that can arise when the probabilities individuals face...