Determinants of endogenous price risk in corn and wheat futures markets

This analysis evaluates determinants of price variability in U.S. corn and wheat futures markets. The analysis is conducted in two segments. In the first segment, conditional heteroscedasticity models of price variability are estimated and used to examine the extent to which market conditions influence price variability. The second component of the analysis uses nonstructural vector autoregressive models to evaluate factors related to implied volatilities calculated from options premia. Our results indicate that corn and wheat price variability is significantly related to the ratio of use to stocks, futures market activity, and growing conditions. In addition, important seasonal and autoregressive effects are revealed. Our results provide an intuitive interpretation for GARCH and ARCH effects, which are often demonstrated for futures price data.