IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v4y1979i2p135-149.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Analysis of the Variance and Distribution of Commodity Price Changes

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen J. Taylor

    (Department of Operational Research, Lancaster University, UK. We wish to thank the UK Science Research Council for supporting part of the research and the referees for their helpful comments.)

  • Brian G. Kingsman

    (Department of Operational Research, Lancaster University, UK. We wish to thank the UK Science Research Council for supporting part of the research and the referees for their helpful comments.)

Abstract

A method of jointly estimating the time-dependent variance of daily commodity price changes and their distribution is presented. The data are copper spot prices (1966-74) and sugar futures prices (1961-73), for London contracts. Much of the leptokurtosis observed in the price change distributions is shown to result from the mixinq of non-normal distributions whose variances differ substantially. There are important consequences for conventional autocorrelation tests, which falsely assume a constant variance. The usefulness of the logarithmic transformation of prices is assessed statistically and it is found that the transformation does help to equalise the variance of price changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen J. Taylor & Brian G. Kingsman, 1979. "An Analysis of the Variance and Distribution of Commodity Price Changes," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 4(2), pages 135-149, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:4:y:1979:i:2:p:135-149
    DOI: 10.1177/031289627900400205
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/031289627900400205
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/031289627900400205?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blattberg, Robert C & Gonedes, Nicholas J, 1974. "A Comparison of the Stable and Student Distributions as Statistical Models for Stock Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(2), pages 244-280, April.
    2. Fielitz, Bruce D., 1971. "Stationarity of Random Data: Some Implications for the Distribution of Stock Price Changes," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(3), pages 1025-1034, June.
    3. Dean W. Wichern & Robert B. Miller & Der‐Ann Hsu, 1976. "Changes of Variance in First‐Order Autoregressive Time Series Models—With an Application," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 25(3), pages 248-256, November.
    4. Clark, Peter K, 1973. "A Subordinated Stochastic Process Model with Finite Variance for Speculative Prices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(1), pages 135-155, January.
    5. Nelson, Harold Jr. & Granger, C. W. J., 1979. "Experience with using the Box-Cox transformation when forecasting economic time series," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 57-69, April.
    6. Westerfield, Randolph, 1977. "The Distribution of Common Stock Price Changes: An Application of Transactions Time and Subordinated Stochastic Models," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(5), pages 743-765, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steeley, James M. & Matyushkin, Alexander, 2015. "The effects of quantitative easing on the volatility of the gilt-edged market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 113-128.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Yi & Liu, Huifang & Zhang, Lei, 2019. "Modeling and forecasting return jumps using realized variation measures," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 63-80.
    2. Drama, Bedi Guy Herve & Yao, Shen, 2010. "Management of Stock Price and it Effect on Economic Growth: Case study of West African Financial Markets," MPRA Paper 24907, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Drama Bedi Guy HERVE & Yao SHEN, 2010. "Management Of Stock Price And Its Effect On Economic Growth: Case Study Of West African Financial Markets," Journal of Applied Economic Sciences, Spiru Haret University, Faculty of Financial Management and Accounting Craiova, vol. 5(3(13)/Fal), pages 231-246.
    4. Degiannakis, Stavros & Xekalaki, Evdokia, 2004. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH) Models: A Review," MPRA Paper 80487, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Jensen, Mark J. & Maheu, John M., 2010. "Bayesian semiparametric stochastic volatility modeling," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 157(2), pages 306-316, August.
    6. Yeap, Claudia & Kwok, Simon S. & Choy, S. T. Boris, 2016. "A Flexible Generalised Hyperbolic Option Pricing Model and its Special Cases," Working Papers 2016-14, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    7. Zou, Yongjie & Li, Honggang, 2014. "Time spans between price maxima and price minima in stock markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 395(C), pages 303-309.
    8. Fong, Wai Mun, 1997. "Robust beta estimation: Some empirical evidence," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 167-186.
    9. Greg Hannsgen, 2011. "Infinite-variance, Alpha-stable Shocks in Monetary SVAR: Final Working Paper Version," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_682, Levy Economics Institute.
    10. Kevin Fergusson & Eckhard Platen, 2006. "On the Distributional Characterization of Daily Log-Returns of a World Stock Index," Applied Mathematical Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 19-38.
    11. Stavros Degiannakis & Alexandra Livada & Epaminondas Panas, 2008. "Rolling-sampled parameters of ARCH and Levy-stable models," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(23), pages 3051-3067.
    12. Robert A. Weigand, 1996. "Trading volume and firm size: A test of the information spillover hypothesis," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(1), pages 47-58, December.
    13. Wright, Calvin & Swidler, Steve, 2023. "Abnormal trading volume, news and market efficiency: Evidence from the Jamaica Stock Exchange," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    14. Saswat Patra & Malay Bhattacharyya, 2021. "Does volume really matter? A risk management perspective using cross‐country evidence," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(1), pages 118-135, January.
    15. Brida, Juan Gabriel & Risso, Wiston Adrián, 2008. "Multidimensional minimal spanning tree: The Dow Jones case," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(21), pages 5205-5210.
    16. Phoebe Koundouri & Nikolaos Kourogenis, 2011. "On the Distribution of Crop Yields: Does the Central Limit Theorem Apply?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1341-1357.
    17. Sarika Mahajan & Balwinder Singh, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of Stock Price-Volume Relationship in Indian Stock Market," Vision, , vol. 12(3), pages 1-13, July.
    18. GUORUI BIAN & MICHAEL McALEER & WING-KEUNG WONG, 2013. "Robust Estimation And Forecasting Of The Capital Asset Pricing Model," Annals of Financial Economics (AFE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(02), pages 1-18.
    19. Sinha, Pankaj & Agnihotri, Shalini, 2014. "Investigating impact of volatility persistence, market asymmetry and information inflow on volatility of stock indices using bivariate GJR-GARCH," MPRA Paper 58303, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Bucsa, G. & Jovanovic, F. & Schinckus, C., 2011. "A unified model for price return distributions used in econophysics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(20), pages 3435-3443.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:4:y:1979:i:2:p:135-149. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.