Abstract
The existence of a negative variance risk premium on agricultural futures contracts suggests that market participants pay to hedge unexpected increases in the volatility of these contracts. In this paper, we decompose the variance risk premium in corn and soybeans markets into jump and diffusive components using options and futures data from 2009 to 2021. We find that market participants on average only pay to hedge unexpected increases in jump volatility but not those in diffusive volatility. Furthermore, growing season uncertainty and the arrival of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announcements play important roles in driving the market’s fear of unexpectedly large price jumps.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1428-1452 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | European Review of Agricultural Economics |
Volume | 50 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 1 2023 |
Keywords
- agricultural commodity markets
- futures
- options
- variance risk premium
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Economics and Econometrics