This draft chapter, prepared for inclusion in the (prospective) Handbook of Production Economics, Vol. 1 (Theory), edited by Subash Ray, Robert Chambers, and Subal Kumbhakar, analyses recent developments in the modeling of pollution-generating technologies. We first lay out the inadequacies of the traditional, single-equation representations of models of such technologies prominently associated...

We estimate a model of common and commodity-specific, highand low-frequency factors, built on the spline-GARCH model of Engle and Rangel (2008) to explain the period of exceptionally high price volatility in commodity markets during 2006-2008. We find that decomposing realized volatility into highand low-frequency components reveals the impact of slowly-evolving macroeconomic variables on the p...

Unlike derivatives of financial contracts, commodity options exhibit distinct particularities owing to physical aspects of the underlying. An adaptation of no-arbitrage pricing to this kind of derivative turns out to be a stress test, challenging the martingale-based models with diverse technical and technological constraints, with storability and short selling restrictions, and sometimes with ...

Commodity loans are presented as an interpretation of spreads between spot and futures prices in commodity markets. This interpretation suggests an alternative to convenience yield as an explanation for the existence of large positive differences between spot and futures prices that are inconsistent with the usual arbitrage arguments. A model is presented in which an owner of a stock of a commo...

This paper looks at the response of growers and merchants, first to vine disease and high prices, and then to the problems of overproduction and product adulteration. France produced a large range of wines, but by the early twentieth century most commodity chains were failing to provide accurate information for consumers to discriminate between differences in quality. The paper argues that the ...

This paper discusses the incentive to bundle when consumer valuations are nonadditive and/or when products are supplied by separate sellers. Whether integrated or separate, firms have an incentive to introduce a bundle discount when demand for the bundle is elastic relative to demand for stand-alone products. A simple formula is derived for when an integrated firm supplying substitute products ...

This paper reviews the use and structure of commodity-linked credit instruments. It is argued that in the absence of contingent markets food firms face increasing financial risk reduced investment, and limited access to debt markets. One strategy is to issue commodity-linked credit whose payment structure is linked to the price of an underlying commodity. In some cases, a commodity-linked bond ...