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Abstract
A structural model is developed to simulate the probability distributions of corn prices
by month. The intent is to determine the relationship between model specifications, based on a
rational expectations competitive storage framework, and the probability distributions of
monthly prices. Specifically, can a structural model generate corn prices with characteristics that
are consistent with those observed in the 1990s? The model in this paper produces cash prices
that inter alia have positively skewed distributions where the mean and variance increase over
the storage season. The model also generates futures prices as conditional expectations of spot
prices at contract maturity. The variances of these futures prices have realistic time-to-maturity
and seasonal effects. The model is solved and simulated so that the consequences of making the
model increasingly complex can be determined. A “curse of dimensionality” is inevitable with
the increased complexity, resulting in lengthy computing times, but the final specification
generates plausible probability distributions. In contrast to other models in the literature, our
specification does not depend on the unrealistic assumption of zero stock-levels to generate
skewed price distributions and the Abackwardation@ commonly observed in prices between
crop years. Non-linearity in the supply of storage is achieved by modeling convenience yield.
The model can be used to depict price behavior conditional on varying levels of the state
variables, e.g., for large or small stock levels. Having created realistic probability distributions
of prices, a logical next step is to use the distributions to appraise marketing strategies to manage
price risk for corn.