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Article
Variance risk premia for agricultural commodities
Agricultural Finance Review
  • Wenwen Xi, University of Toronto
  • Dermot Hayes, Iowa State University
  • Sergio Horacio Lence, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Accepted Manuscript
Publication Date
1-1-2019
DOI
10.1108/AFR-07-2018-0056
Abstract

We study the variance risk premium (i.e., the difference between historical realized variance and the variance swap rate) in corn and soybean markets from 2010 through 2016. Variance risk is negatively priced for both commodities, but is more statistically significant for soybean than for corn. There are moderate commonalities in variance within the agricultural sector, but fairly weak commonalities between the agricultural and the equity sectors. Corn and soybean variance risk premia in dollar terms are time-varying and correlated with the variance swap rate. In contrast, agricultural commodity variance risk premia in log return terms are more likely to be constant and less correlated with the log variance swap rate. Variance and price (return) risk premia in agricultural markets are weakly correlated, and the correlation depends on the sign of the returns. The latter finding suggests that the variance risk is unspanned by commodity futures, i.e., it is an independent source of risk. The empirical results also suggest that the implied volatilities in corn and soybean futures market overestimate true expected volatility by approximately 15%. This has implications for derivative products, such as revenue insurance, that use these implied volatilities to calculate fair premia.

Comments

This is a manuscript of an article published as Xi, W., Hayes, D. and Lence, S. (2019), "Variance risk premia for agricultural commodities", Agricultural Finance Review, Vol. 79 No. 3, pp. 286-303. doi: 10.1108/AFR-07-2018-0056. Posted with permission.

Copyright Owner
Emerald Publishing Limited
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Wenwen Xi, Dermot Hayes and Sergio Horacio Lence. "Variance risk premia for agricultural commodities" Agricultural Finance Review Vol. 79 Iss. 3 (2019) p. 286 - 303
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/dermot_hayes/206/