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Commodity Price Behavior With Storage Frictions

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  • Evans, Lewis
  • Guthrie, Graeme

Abstract

We present a competitive storage model of commodity prices featuring frictions that introduce an element of irreversibility into storage decisions. This leads to situations in which speculators do not trade in the spot market even though total storage is positive. As a result the market value of the stored commodity which is determined in the (financial) market for ownership of firms operating storage facilities can diverge from the spot price. Such price separation leads to the existence of an endogenous convenience yield which we show equals the expected excess return on a real option embedded in each unit of the stored commodity. The outputs of our model are consistent with the stylized facts regarding commodity price distributions including serial correlation and GARCH characteristics. Samuelson's hypothesis - that forward prices are less volatile than spot prices - does not hold in general.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:vuw:vuwcsr:19065
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    File URL: https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/19065
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Hirbod Assa & Amal Dabbous & Nikolay Gospodinov, 2013. "A staggered pricing approach to modeling speculative storage: implications for commodity price dynamics," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2013-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

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