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The purpose of this paper is to derive a new option pricing model for options on futures calendar spreads. Calendar spread option volume has been low and a more precise model to price them could lead to lower bid-ask spreads as well as more accurate marking to market of open positions.

The new option pricing model is a two-factor model with the futures price and the convenience yield as the two factors. The key assumption is that convenience follows arithmetic Brownian motion. The new model and alternative models are tested using corn futures prices. The testing considers both the accuracy of distributional assumptions and the accuracy of the models’ predictions of historical payoffs.

Panel unit root tests fail to reject the unit root null hypothesis for historical calendar spreads and thus they support the assumption of convenience yield following arithmetic Brownian motion. Option payoffs are estimated with five different models and the relative performance of the models is determined using bias and root mean squared error. The new model outperforms the four other models; most of the other models overestimate actual payoffs.

The model is parameterized using historical data due to data limitations although future research could consider implied parameters. The model assumes that storage costs are constant and so it cannot separate between negative convenience yield and mismeasured storage costs.

The over 30-year search for a calendar spread pricing model has not produced a satisfactory model. Current models that do not assume cointegration will overprice calendar spread options. The model used by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for marking to market of open positions is shown to work poorly. The model proposed here could be used as a basis for automated trading on calendar spread options as well as marking to market of open positions.

The model is new. The empirical work supports both the model’s assumptions and its predictions as being more accurate than competing models.

This study aims to investigate the role of international price volatility and inventories on domestic market price dynamics in the case of agricultural commodities.

A structural model is employed to uncover relationships among commodity price, price volatility, inventories and convenience yield. Monthly producer price data along with annual data on trade, consumption, inventories and tariffs for 71 countries and 13 commodities covering 2010–2019 are assembled to estimate the model. With a first-stage Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) estimator to identify the best instrument set, a nonlinear approach is used to estimate the model.

Results show that international market information plays a critical role in domestic market price dynamics. International price volatility has a stronger effect on domestic prices than that of international inventories.

Current upheaval in commodity markets requires an understanding of how prices move together and inventories affect that movement. A country's internal price is not independent of the effects of global market events.

Although hypotheses exist that global market information (volatility and inventories) helps countries manage domestic commodity prices, there have been limited studies on this relationship, especially with a structured model and cross-country data.

The authors' paper aims to deal with the question whether speculative bubbles are present in agricultural commodity prices.

The authors apply a regime switching regression model to test the hypothesis that agricultural prices contain periodically collapsing bubbles. Using daily futures prices for six agricultural commodities, the authors calculate net convenience yields from which price fundamentals are derived.

The authors discover pronounced deviations between observed prices and their fundamental values. However, they do not find evidence for the presence of periodically and partially collapsing speculative bubbles for five of six commodities. Except for soybeans, the signs and the significance of the estimated coefficients are not entirely in line with the predictions of the theoretical model.

The authors' study adds to the heated discussion on the impact of speculative behavior on agricultural commodity prices. So far, most contributions in the literature either use theoretical arguments for the (non‐) existence of bubbles or apply indirect tests which are plagued by low statistical reliability. In contrast, the authors apply a direct test. They find that the outcome of empirical bubble tests depends on the considered bubble type and on the testing procedure. In view of these ambiguities, definite statements on the presence of speculative bubbles as well as demands for limitations of speculative positions in commodity futures markets should be carefully reconsidered.

As far as steel‐rod structures are concerned the yield‐hinge theory is a very efficient approach of the ultimate‐load theory. Unfortunately, most of the published strategies suffer from considerable deficiencies which depend on two main reasons: first, the yield condition is not approximated very well, and, second, a flow rule is not incorporated at all. This may significantly affect the calculated load‐carrying behaviour and as a consequence the elasto‐plastic failure prediction. In the present paper a consistent formulation of a refined numerical method based on the yield‐hinge theory is consistently developed from the theory of plasticity. The derivation is carried out in the framework of a geometrically nonlinear Timoshenko beam theory discretized for the displacement based finite element method. The plastic deformations can be interpreted as three‐dimensional eccentric yield‐hinges (generalized yield‐hinges). The presented numerical xamples show the efficiency of the proposed method.

This paper aims to better understand if speculative activity is a factor or even the main factor in the run-up of oil prices in the spot market, particularly in the recent price bubble that occurred in the period from mid-2003 to 2008.

The methodology used is based on an existing vector autoregressive model proposed by Kilian and Murphy (2014), which is a structural model of the global market for crude oil that accounts for flow demand and flow supply shocks and speculative demand oil shocks.

From the output of the authors’ structural model, the authors ruled out speculation as a factor of rising oil prices. The authors have found instead that the rapid oil demand caused by an unexpected increase in the global business cycle is the most accurate culprit. Despite the change of perspective in the speculative component, the authors’ conclusions concur with the findings of Kilian and Murphy (2014) and others.

As far as the authors are aware, this is the first time that a study has used as a spread oil variable, a speculative component of the real price, replacing the oil inventories considered by Kilian and Murphy (2014). Another contribution is that the model used allows estimating traditional oil demand elasticity in production and oil supply elasticity in spread movements, casting doubt on existing models with perfect price-inelastic output for crude oil.

This paper seeks to analyze stylized statistical properties of the recent traded asset CO₂ emission allowances, for spot and futures returns, examining also the relation linking convenience yield and risk premium, for the German European Energy Exchange (EEX) between October 2005 and October 2009.

The study was conducted through empirical estimations of CO₂ allowances risk premium, convenience yield, and their relationships.

Future prices from an ex-post perspective are examined to show evidence for significant negative risk premium, or a positive forward premium. A positive relationship between risk premium and time-to-maturity is found. Both financial concepts are found to be negatively affected by spot price volatility. Convenience yield is positively influenced by CO₂ price, while influencing the risk premium positively.

From a financial perspective, allowances seem to be producing the desired effects in terms of environmental policies, although a lot more remains to be done. The presence of risk premium and convenience yield makes it clear that agents act in this commodity market according to risk consideration. Results change depending on phase and futures contracts used for the determination of both financial terms, indicating that uncertainties over the future of EU-ETS seem to be decreasing.

Previous research has mainly focused on the first phase of the EU-ETS (2005-2007), whereas this paper extends the analysis period here. The paper finds some opposite results compared with previous commodities theories and designs some policy implications, given the results attained.

In September, 2011, to prevent its currency from appreciating after the Global Financial Crisis, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) decided to peg its currency to EUR and announced that it would not let CHF go beyond 1/1.20 EUR. Maintaining the peg required the SNB to purchase foreign currency assets virtually endlessly in response to the worsening Eurozone crisis. By end of 2014, its foreign currency exchange reserves amounted to almost 80% of its GDP. In an attempt to deter capital flows and reduce its balance sheet size, in December, 2014, the SNB first bought the interest rate on commercial bank deposits to negative levels and then, facing impending quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, announced the removal of the peg on January 15, 2015. The case describes the backdrop and the circumstances leading up to removal of the peg.

This chapter develops a no-arbitrage, futures equilibrium cost-of-carry model to demonstrate that the existence of cointegration between spot and futures prices in the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) crude oil market depends crucially on the time-series properties of the underlying model. In marked contrast to previous studies, the futures equilibrium model utilizes information contained in both the quality delivery option and convenience yield as a timing delivery option in the NYMEX contract. Econometric tests of the speculative efficiency hypothesis (also termed the “unbiasedness hypothesis”) are developed and common tests of this hypothesis examined. The empirical results overwhelming support the hypotheses that the NYMEX future price is an unbiased predictor of future spot prices and that no-arbitrage opportunities are available. The results also demonstrate why common tests of the speculative efficiency hypothesis and simple arbitrage models often reject one or both of these hypotheses.

This paper aims to investigate the redemption of promotional offers in a mobile service context. It specifically studies how mobile coupon redemption depends on the type of product offered, the convenience of accessing a retailer and the consumer’s shopping motivation. Retailers increasingly use mobile coupon services as a complementary channel to send promotional offers to consumers.

Two studies examine how the three factors interact in determining coupon redemption. Both involve a scenario-based experiment. Participants are over 750 members of an online panel in the USA.

The results show that when the retailer offers a hedonic product, consumers’ shopping motivation matters more, whereas when the retailer offers a utilitarian product, consumers’ location dominates their redemption intentions.

One limitation of this research is the use of hypothetical scenarios. Although this limitation was addressed by conducting a quasi-experiment, future research could be carried out using a field experiment.

Results suggest that in a mobile channel, personalization of promotions is more important for utilitarian shoppers than for hedonic shoppers.

Drawing on the theories of regulatory focus and preference for the status quo, this paper posits that mobile coupon redemption is determined by whether the offer requires consumers to divert from their focal shopping motivation (i.e. their status quo). The authors explain this difference by showing the mediating role of regulatory fit.

This paper attempts to reconcile an apparent contradiction between short‐run and long‐run movements in the price of gold. The theoretical model suggests a set of conditions under which the price of gold rises over time at the general rate of inflation and hence be an effective hedge against inflation. The model also demonstrates that short‐run changes in the gold lease rate, the real interest rate, convenience yield, default risk, the covariance of gold returns with other assets and the dollar/world exchange rate can disturb this equilibrium relationship and generate short‐run price volatility. Using monthly gold price data (1976–1999), and cointegration regression techniques, an empirical analysis confirms the central hypotheses of the theoretical model.