The use of crop yield futures contracts is examined. The expectation being modeled here reflects that of an Illinois corn and soybeans producer at planting, of revenue realized at harvest. The effects of using price and crop yield contracts are measured by comparing the results of the expected...

The lean hog futures contract is replacing the live hog futures contract at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange beginning with the February 1997 contract. The lean hog futures will be cash settled based on a broad-based lean hog price index, eliminating terminal markets from the price discovery...

Value-at-Risk (VaR) determines the probability of a portfolio of assets losing a certain amount in a given time period due to adverse market conditions with a particular level of confidence. Value-at-Risk has received considerable attention from financial economists and financial practitioners...

This text is the first major survey of risk analysis from the perspective of the agricultural firms since Agricultural Decision Analysis by Anderson, Dillon, and Hardaker published in 1977. In addition to updating the traditional material from that text, this book includes the statistical...

The agricultural and energy industries are closely related, both biologically and financially. The paper discusses the relationship and the interactions on price and volatility, with special focus on the covolatility spillover effects for these two industries. The interaction and covolatility...

The recent and rapidly growing interest in biofuel as a green energy source has raised concerns about its impact on the prices, returns and volatility of related agricultural commodities. Analyzing the spillover effects on agricultural commodities and biofuel helps commodity suppliers hedge...

In his seminal article, Samuelson (1965) proposes the maturity effect that volatility of futures prices should increase as futures contract approaches expiration. This study provides new evidence on the maturity effect by examining a more extensive set of futures contracts over longer period...

Motivated by repeated price spikes and crashes over the last decade, we investigate whether the intensive investment activities of commodity index traders (CITs) have destabilized agricultural futures markets. Using a stochastic volatility model, we treat conditional volatility as an unobserved...

Motivated by repeated price spikes and crashes over the last decade, we investigate whether the intensive investment activities of commodity index traders (CITs) have destabilized agricultural futures markets. Using a stochastic volatility model, we treat conditional volatility as an unobserved...

Recent years witnessed commodity prices increases which have fostered research-works on their predictability and a renewed interest of practitioners and policy makers. The objective of this paper is to test the predictive ability of futures prices on the underlying spot prices by taking corn,...