This paper investigates the impact of speculation on prices of agricultural commodities. Recently, non-commercial traders are responsible for price peaks and increased volatility on agricultural markets. As a matter of fact, speculation with commodity futures has increased over the last decade....

It is frequently stated that price risk in European agriculture in-creases due to the liberalization of formerly regulated markets. This argument is used to motivate the necessity of risk manage-ment and income stabilization for farms. Against this background we empirically investigate the price...

We analyze the speed of mean reversion (k) in the convenience yield and the spot price volatility for 7 US commodities between 1989-2012. In the hog market k is large, soybeans exhibit the lowest values. While for 5 of 7 commodities κ is lower in the more recent period (2005-2012) than in the...