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Separating the Roles of Speculators and Consumers: a Model of Futures Trade
Author(s) -
Pitchford Rohan
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
australian economic papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1467-8454
pISSN - 0004-900X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8454.00033
Subject(s) - futures contract , speculation , economics , normal backwardation , forward market , futures market , microeconomics , spot contract , financial economics , macroeconomics
The general equilibrium model of Britto (1984) is criticised. In particular, it is shown that allowing consumers to trade on the futures market leads to more complicated results than necessary. If consumers do not trade futures, and only producers and speculators do, results are greatly simplified. Consumer risk parameters, and parameters of producers production function are irrelevant. The differential between the futures price and the expected spot price, and the direction of futures trade is shown to depend in a straightforward way on the price elasticity of demand for the product on the spot market.