Fadiga, Mohamadou L.

April, 2007

By: Fadiga, Mohamadou L.; Misra, Sukant K.
A multivariate unobserved component model was applied to identify common movements among cotton, wool, rayon, and polyester world prices. Two common stochastic trends and cycles govern the stochastic behaviors of price fluctuations in the world fiber market. These unobserved components have important implications as they can help in the design of more efficient commodity programs to smooth terms of trade shocks, especially in developing countries. The study found the effect of inventory adjustments on world cotton price is diminishing, which indicates that speculative behaviors in the world fiber market are less prevalent than previously thought.

April, 2003

By: Ramirez, Octavio A.; Fadiga, Mohamadou L.
The performance of a proposed asymmetric-error GARCH model is evaluated in comparison to the normal-error- and Student-t-GARCH models through three applications involving forecasts of U.S. soybean, sorghum, and wheat prices. The applications illustrate the relative advantages of the proposed model specification when the error term is asymmetrically distributed, and provide improved probabilistic forecasts for the prices of these commodities.