IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtu/wpaper/08_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Storage Under Backwardation: A Direct Test of the Wright-Williams Conjecture

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Coleman

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

Abstract

Commodities are often stored when the spot price exceeds the future price in a central market. Wright and Williams conjectured that inventories are held in locations far from the central market on these occasions. In these locations the spot price is lower than the price for forward delivery because transport costs are temporarily high. This hypothesis has not been directly tested, because prices for forward delivery are not normally available at non-central locations. This paper uses an example where these prices exist to test the hypothesis. The evidence, from the late nineteenth century corn markets in Chicago and New York, strongly supports the conjecture. Length: 30 pages

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Coleman, 2008. "Storage Under Backwardation: A Direct Test of the Wright-Williams Conjecture," Working Papers 08_13, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:08_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/08_13.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Williams,Jeffrey C. & Wright,Brian D., 2005. "Storage and Commodity Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521023399.
    2. Andrew Coleman, 2009. "A Model of Spatial Arbitrage with Transport Capacity Constraints and Endogenous Transport Prices," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 91(1), pages 42-56.
    3. Nicholas Kaldor, 1939. "Speculation and Economic Stability," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 7(1), pages 1-27.
    4. Darren L. Frechette & Paul L. Fackler, 1999. "What Causes Commodity Price Backwardation?," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 81(4), pages 761-771.
    5. Working, Holbrook & Hobe, Adelaide M., 1929. "The Post-Harvest Depression of Wheat Prices," Wheat Studies, Stanford University, Food Research Institute, vol. 6(01), pages 1-40, November.
    6. Fackler, Paul L. & Goodwin, Barry K., 2001. "Spatial price analysis," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: B. L. Gardner & G. C. Rausser (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 17, pages 971-1024, Elsevier.
    7. Martin Benirschka & James K. Binkley, 1995. "Optimal Storage and Marketing Over Space and Time," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 77(3), pages 512-524.
    8. Brennan, Donna & Williams, Jeffrey & Wright, Brian D, 1997. "Convenience Yield without the Convenience: A Spatial-Temporal Interpretation of Storage under Backwardation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(443), pages 1009-1022, July.
    9. George G. Tunell, 1897. "The Diversion of the Flour and Grain Traffic from the Great Lakes to the Railroads," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(3), pages 340-340.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Andrew Coleman, 2007. "A model of spatial arbitrage with transport capacity constraints and endogenous transport prices," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2007/05, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    2. Andrew Coleman, 2007. "The pitfalls of estimating transactions costs from price data: evidence from trans-Atlantic gold-point arbitrage, 1886-1905," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2007/07, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    3. Franken, Jason R.V. & Garcia, Philip & Irwin, Scott H., 2006. "Do Interest Rates Explain Disaggregate Commodity Price Growth?," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21319, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    4. Seamon, V. Frederick & Kahl, Kandice H. & Curtis, Charles E., Jr., 2001. "Regional And Seasonal Differences In The Cotton Basis," Journal of Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics Association of Georgia, vol. 19(2), pages 1-15.
    5. Brockhaus, Jan & Kalkuhl, Matthias & Kozicka, Marta, 2016. "What Drives India’s Rice Stocks? Empirical Evidence," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235659, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Nicolas Legrand, 2019. "The Empirical Merit Of Structural Explanations Of Commodity Price Volatility: Review And Perspectives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 639-664, April.
    7. Evans, Lewis & Guthrie, Graeme, 2007. "Commodity Price Behavior With Storage Frictions," Working Paper Series 3966, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    8. Yoon, Byung-Sam & Brorsen, B. Wade, 2002. "Market Inversion in Commodity Futures Prices," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(3), pages 459-476, December.
    9. repec:vuw:vuwscr:19065 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Evans, Lewis & Guthrie, Graeme, 2007. "Commodity Price Behavior With Storage Frictions," Working Paper Series 19065, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    11. Christophe Gouel, 2012. "Agricultural Price Instability: A Survey Of Competing Explanations And Remedies," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 129-156, February.
    12. Prabhat Vaze, "undated". "A Model of Inter-Regional Trade in Grains with Storage," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 10, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    13. Atle Oglend & Vesa-Heikki Soini, 2020. "Equilibrium Working Curves with Heterogeneous Agents," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 56(2), pages 355-372, August.
    14. Tomek, William G. & Peterson, Hikaru Hanawa, 2000. "Risk Management in Agricultural Markets: A Survey," Staff Papers 121140, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    15. Colin A. Carter & Gordon C. Rausser & Aaron Smith, 2011. "Commodity Booms and Busts," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 87-118, October.
    16. Alexander E. Saak, 2002. "Location and Marketing under Marketing Assistance Loan and Loan Deficiency Payment Programs," Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) Publications (archive only) 02-wp297, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    17. Gao, Lin & Hitzemann, Steffen & Shaliastovich, Ivan & Xu, Lai, 2022. "Oil volatility risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 456-491.
    18. Sergio H. Lence & GianCarlo Moschini & Fabio Gaetano Santeramo, 2018. "Threshold cointegration and spatial price transmission when expectations matter," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(1), pages 25-39, January.
    19. Arndt, Channing & Schiller, Rico & Tarp, Finn, 2001. "Grain transport and rural credit in Mozambique: solving the space-time problem," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 59-70, June.
    20. Porteous, Obie C., 2015. "High Trade Costs and Their Consequences: An Estimated Model of African Agricultural Storage and Trade," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205776, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    21. Zhou, Wei, 2015. "Three essays on modeling biofuel feedstock supply," ISU General Staff Papers 201501010800005728, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inventories; commodity prices; transport costs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L92 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Railroads and Other Surface Transportation
    • N71 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • Q13 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Markets and Marketing; Cooperatives; Agribusiness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:mtu:wpaper:08_13. 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: Maxine Watene (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/motuenz.html .

    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.