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This paper is concerned with the conceptual, discursive, and political inclination within spatial and social thought towards enacting 'new worlds', 'worlds to come', and 'possible worlds'. Against the backdrop of this diffuse habit, which I refer to as 'worldly futuring', the paper calls attention to the ongoing challenge posed by worldlessness. It asks: what is lost, existentially or politically, in prioritising world‐building over world‐ending? Articulating a response to this question, the paper examines how the investment in future worlds functions, what it secures, and what it indemnifies against. Definitionally, 'world' lacks the ethical designation required to explain its signalling function as a positive horizon of futurity. Worldly futuring instead relies on three connected affirmations: world presents the promise of (meta)stability, of commonality, and of meaning. In prioritising these affirmations, worldly futuring immunises itself against the possibility of their radical absence or violent undoing, thereby working around, against, or sublating the threat of worldlessness. However, building on the scholarship of Derrida on worldless alterity and theorists of black negativity's political calls for the 'end of the world', the central argument of the paper is that working‐away worldlessness is neither inherently possible nor necessarily desirable. Despite any attempt at immunisation, worldlessness haunts any project of worldly futuring, showing us that the assumed connection between world and futurity may well be an obstacle to radical futures. This paper is concerned with the conceptual, discursive, and political inclination within spatial and social thought towards enacting 'new worlds', 'worlds to come', and 'possible worlds'. Against the backdrop of this diffuse habit, I call attention to the ongoing challenge posed by worldlessness. What is lost, existentially or politically, in prioritising world‐building over world‐ending? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread and growth of ubiquitous smart technology to deliver public health outcomes, particularly within/at home, urgently requires greater scholarly attention. This paper uses data from interviews with professionals in Scotland who are designing and implementing Technology‐Enabled Care (TEC) for current and future homes. Theoretically informed by both critical geographies of home and futures scholarship, this paper presents a three‐part framework – "homes‐that‐are," "homes‐that‐ought," and "homes‐to‐be" – to explore the techno‐solutionist accounts of home, bringing to bear the messiness and complexity of home, both its conceptualisation and experience. It highlights prediction as an emerging form of anticipatory practice, generating new questions and conceptualisations about the openness of futures. Moreover, it demonstrates the importance of understanding the underlying assumptions of those who make decisions when planning for future TEC and housing; about who they imagine they are planning for, and how diverse these futures are. This paper presents a three‐part framework – "homes‐that‐are," "homes‐that‐ought," and "homes‐to‐be" – to explore the techno‐solutionist accounts of home, bringing to bear the messiness and complexity of home, both its conceptualisation and experience. Using data from interviews with professionals in Scotland who are designing and implementing Technology‐Enabled Care (TEC) for current and future homes, it highlights prediction as an emerging form of anticipatory practice, generating new questions on the openness of futures. It also demonstrates the importance of understanding underlying assumptions of those who make decisions when planning for future TEC and housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper study the exposure of Dow Jones Islamic equity indices to global risk factors while considering both effects of speculative influence and fundamental changes. The study involves future markets according to Shari'a guidelines that ban speculative trading. Nonlinear ARDL modelling approach along with dynamic asymmetric causality tests is conducted to scrutinize long‐run and short‐run asymmetries and asymmetric causalities. The used data are crude refined oil future prices to stand for fundamental chocks in speculative trading and implied volatility index to stand for speculative pressure. Obtained results approve the presence of asymmetric cointegration between Islamic equity indices and oil‐VIX future prices. The Islamic indices are sensitive to oil‐VIX future chocks both in the long run and the short run. Asymmetric causality tests indicate the existence of asymmetric causality running from crude refined oil future prices which confirm the fundamental contagion effects but the causality from VIX to Islamic indices is not pronounced at all. Results support the absence of speculative influence on Islamic indices and prove that DJIM indices corroborate with Shari'a compliant rules. In sum, the paper confirms the asymmetric cointegration and then assumes that the asymmetry is present in Islamic equity indices inherent to changes in international futures prices. The paper shows the structure of exposure to global markets' expectations and provides faith‐based investors with insights about the attitude of Islamic indices towards the future. Our findings suggest useful highlights to policymakers, portfolio managers, faith‐based investors and scholars. We then could state that if long‐run relationship occurs it is naturally asymmetrical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate how different emotions affect the subsequent index futures returns. We test the forecasting regressions which predict the S&P 500 index futures returns with lagged text‐based emotion (anger, joy, fear, optimism, and gloom) indices and find asymmetric forecasting power exists between pessimism and optimism emotion indices. We show that only the text‐based anger index could reliably perform at predicting index futures return in‐sample and outperform the prevailing unconditional mean out‐of‐sample. Notably, the predictive power of the text‐based anger index persists after controlling for other emotion indices, investor sentiment indices, and fundamental variables known to predict the futures market. And the asset allocation conditioning on text‐based anger index can generate substantial economic benefits. Furthermore, the anger index influences the index futures return through both the discount rate and cash flow channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of contract farming of sugarcane in an outgrower scheme in Tanzania, this paper explores how the scheme has fundamentally altered people's relationships with the land over the last 50 years, in particular, since 1999, when, after three decades, the sugar parastatal was privatized. The paper reviews the literature on the mutual relationship between contract farming and land ownership and examines the scheme with a focus on long‐term changes in the forms of land acquisitions and land use. We argue that the meaning and importance of landownership in contract farming schemes needs to be reassessed if participation in contract farming entails a departure from previous forms of acquiring land, generates new spatial patterns of agricultural production, and necessitates additional economic and social resources in order to transform land into an economic asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of trade policy on foreign trade is becoming increasingly prominent. This paper chooses the Chinese soybean futures market to study the impact of Sino–US trade friction. The results show that the asymmetric effect and volatility of the Chinese soybean futures market become larger after the beginning of Sino–US trade friction. In addition, the relationship among Chinese soybean futures, Chinese soybean meal futures, and Chinese soybean oil futures is strengthened. However, the relationship between Chinese soybean meal futures and American soybean meal futures and between Chinese soybean oil futures and American soybean oil futures has weakened since Sino–US trade friction started. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radically new economic arrangements are needed for just and sustainable transitions to a more environmentally and ecologically resilient world. Yet little progress is being made to imagine the new economy‐environment relations around which resources, actors, and ethics might be configured to enact the novel economic forms needed. This article uses a Social Studies of Economisation and Marketisation (SSEM) approach to examine a suite of differently scaled and structured environmentally focused economic development initiatives in New Zealand. We explore how the initiatives have assembled diverse actors and investment projects into experimental economy‐environment relations. Our account highlights experimentation as a pivotal mode of economisation, and we argue that the initiatives studied by us expose a new experimentation‐led agenda for transitioning to more environmentally and economically just futures. Working with the idea of experimentation in an SSEM framework, we also argue that the diverse initiatives are creating an experimentation infrastructure that provides a more generative platform for novel economy‐environment relations than top–down models of change such as transition pathways. The article opens up a critical politics of environmental economy that focuses attention on emergence, agency, and practice and allows us to reimagine processes of transitioning. This paper brings the Social Studies of Economisation and Marketisation to a suite of diverse environmentally‐focused economic development initiatives in New Zealand. We argue that the initiatives register an experimentation‐led agenda for societal transitioning and that not only is experimentation a pivotal mode of economisation, but it can cohere into an experimentation infrastructure that has a wider collective potentiality, offering us other ways to stimulate processes of transitioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a proposed quantile‐based hedging analysis framework, this paper analyzes the hedging properties and portfolio performance of 15 commodities futures in China, especially under extreme market conditions. Quantile‐on‐quantile regression results show that the dependency structures of most spot and futures prices exhibit an almost similar shape with positive coefficients, which indicates that most futures products are good hedges and safe havens for the corresponding spot prices. Quantile hedge ratios vary with the quantiles, displaying a U‐shape, so the hedge ratios of most commodities should increase moderately in both bearish and bullish markets. As for portfolio performance, metal commodities perform best; agricultural commodities second best, and energy commodities relatively poorly. Out‐of‐sample quantile hedging results are consistent with in‐sample results. Therefore, participating in the futures market can effectively manage risk. The premise is that investors pay attention to market dynamics and adjust their portfolios promptly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contracts that expire in January, May, and September attract the most trading activity for corn futures in China. Contracts that mature in other months are thinly traded, even when they are the closest to maturity. In this paper, we examine and compare the behavior and determinants of the bid–ask spreads (BASs) of active and inactive contracts using the best bid offer data set. We show that both the magnitude and volatility of BAS for inactive contracts exhibit U‐shaped patterns, whereas active contracts' BAS increase only near their expiration. Inactive contracts are also of low liquidity risk after introducing market makers. On the basis of the simultaneous equation model, we find that BAS responds negatively to volume and positively to volatility and order imbalance. The impacts are larger in inactive contracts. Moreover, introducing market makers to inactive contracts is conducive to attracting trading and lowering trading costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether leverage effects and structural changes have positive effects on the volatility prediction of crude oil futures. On the basis of existing HAR models, this paper proposes three classes of new HAR models by considering leverage effects, structural changes, or both. The in‐sample and out‐of‐sample results show that leverage effects and structural changes contain significant information for predicting oil volatility. In most cases, structural changes have more in‐sample and out‐of‐sample incremental information than leverage effect, whereas leverage effects have more out‐of‐sample information for predicting 1‐day volatility. In addition, HAR models with leverage effects and structural changes have better in‐sample and out‐of‐sample performances than the corresponding other three classes of HAR models. The above results mean that leverage effects and structural changes should be considered while modelling and forecasting oil volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the impact of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's (CME) decision to close the livestock futures pits on the execution quality of customer orders. Our findings suggest that, prior to its closure, the livestock futures pit offers high immediacy execution and attracts large orders. Because such high immediacy orders generally execute faster and cost more, their migration to the electronic market after the pit closure explains why the execution of electronic orders becomes on average speedier and more expensive for customers who used to be active pit users. However, our results also indicate that these pit‐user customers face a lower overall execution cost following the pit closure when we account for all their orders, pit and electronic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we find new evidence for the carbon futures volatility prediction by using the spillovers of fossil energy futures returns as a powerful predictor. The in‐sample results show that the spillovers have a significantly positive effect on carbon futures volatility. From the out‐of‐sample analysis with various loss functions, we find that fossil energy return spillovers significantly outperform the benchmark and show better forecasting performance than the competing models using dimension reduction, variable selection, and combination approaches. The predictive ability of the spillovers also holds in long‐term forecasting and does not derive from other carbon‐related variables. It can bring substantial economic gains in the portfolio exercise within carbon futures. Finally, we provide economic explanations on the predictive ability of the fossil energy return spillover by the channels of the carbon emission uncertainty and the investor sentiment on the warming climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand social issues and practices such as those related to climate change and technological change that are clearly future‐oriented – collectively experienced events that are "not yet" – and co‐constructed by different actors, we need nuanced conceptualizations of how people think about, negotiate and co‐create futures that allow us to understand not only what people (can) think and do about future‐related issues but also how that happens, what for and with which implications. However, so far, one of the key theoretical approaches that has conceptualised how people make meaning in situations of change and uncertainty – the socio‐psychological social representations theory (SRT) – has not often engaged with the future or with different forms of temporality. By contrast, the French pragmatic sociology of engagements and critique (PS) has engaged with these notions, conceptualising them in relation to materiality and a plurality of moral orientations – two dimensions often seen as key to how collective futures are made and imagined. To offer a more nuanced and systematic conceptualization of how people represent the future and with what consequences, this paper will present, compare and synthesise SRT and PS, as a first step towards an interdisciplinary research agenda on social change and representations of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the volatility dynamics of futures contracts on crude oil, natural gas, and gasoline. An appropriate Bayesian model comparison exercise between seven stochastic volatility (SV) models is estimated using daily prices for our futures contracts between 2005 and 2023. Moreover, to assess the impacts of COVID‐19 and the Russia–Ukraine conflict on volatility, we analyze these two subsamples. Overall, we find that: (i) the Bayes factor shows that the SV model with t $t$‐distributed innovations outperforms the competing models; (ii) crude oil contracts with different expiry dates may require the introduction of leverage effects; (iii) the t $t$‐distributed innovations remain the appropriate model for the COVID‐19 subsample, while jumps are needed in the conflict period; and (iv) other Bayesian criteria more appropriate to short‐term predictive ability—such as the conditional and the observed‐date deviance information criterion—suggest other rank order to model our futures contracts, despite the agreements for the best models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspirations have gained significant attention within educational anthropology and yet the effects (and affects) of the imperative to aspire that undergird educational projects have been underexamined. This paper argues that aspirations within the context of material depravity often produce immaterial precarity, which I index as affective states of anticipation drawing on ethnographic research with non‐elite young women who were alumni of a girls' empowerment intervention in New Delhi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of futures markets and their dynamic effects on the stability of commodity prices. The analysis is based on combining two econometric approaches: a quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) model of the marginal distributions of futures and spot prices, and a copula of their joint distribution. Applied to the US soybean and corn markets over the period of 1980–2019, the econometric investigation finds evidence of nonlinear price dynamics that depend on the maturity of the futures contract and documents how marginal price distributions and associated moments evolve over time. Based on the estimates of the QVAR model, we provide evidence of local instability in the upper tail of the price distributions. We find that the futures market helps stabilize the market under nearby futures contract maturity. We document the presence of nonlinear cointegration relationships between futures and spot price. Relying on a copula, we find a positive contemporaneous codependence between futures price and spot price across all quantiles, codependence that varies with the futures contract maturity. We also present evidence of a time‐varying basis that affects the convergence properties of the futures and spot price. Our findings shed new light on the joint determination of futures and spot price in commodity markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyst recommendations convey valuable market‐wide information which implies analyst rating should generate reliable predictability for future market returns. This paper examines the predictive regressions which forecast the S&P 500 index futures return and volatility with lagged text‐based analyst rating index (TAR index). Empirical evidence shows that the TAR index generates superior in‐sample predictability. This substantial predictability remains after controlling the business cycles, macroeconomic factors, and economic conditions. Also, the TAR index outperforms the prevailing mean out‐of‐sample and generates significant economic performance. Notably, the TAR index also delivers consistent predictive gains on the volatility of index futures returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the ways that young people create new futures in Taranto, Southern Italy, a city hosting one of the largest and most polluting steel factories in Europe. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Taranto and uses storytelling to understand how young people – a minority of residents aged between 24 and 35 years – shape futures in industrially polluted environments. The study weaves together geographic and anthropological scholarship about futures in (post‐)industrial cities, conceptualisations of breathing as well as lived experiences in highly polluted areas. Through mobilising the notion of breathing, we highlight the embodied, entangled, and emotional dimensions of the young people's everyday practices and develop our concept of "breathing new futures." We argue that both pollution and the envisioning of a new future become visible in everything the study's participants do; the ways they promote environmental awareness, take care of animals, or seek to foster children's education. By focusing on generational differences, the study expands on recent scholarship analysing environmental pollution in relation to intersectional identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender, and sheds light on the activities of young people to imagine and live new futures in polluted environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the volatility index (VIX) is nontradable, most investors use the exchange‐traded VIX futures to hedge their exposures in VIX options. However, the information role of VIX futures in pricing VIX options is not fully explored empirically. This paper derives two types of VIX option pricing formula using VIX index and VIX futures as state variables accordingly based on a simple discrete‐time VIX dynamics with long memory and asymmetric jumps. Empirical results show that models utilizing VIX futures significantly outperform competing models based on S&P 500 index (SPX) returns, realized volatility, or the VIX index itself. Our findings are robust in out‐of‐sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to characterize the effect of high‐frequency quoting (HFQ) on the execution risk of Eurodollar futures. We construct a unique data set to capture the quoting and trading activities within the limit order book, which allows us to classify the realised fraction of HFQ activity within the market. We then estimate the marginal effect of the HFQ fraction on the execution risk through a novel semi‐parametric regression. The results suggest that the effect of HFQ on market quality is nonlinear with critical saturation levels. The HFQ effects on market quality seem to disappear once certain critical points are reached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The price discovery in finance markets has been the focus of many researches. On the basis of 1‐min high‐frequency returns, this paper sets out to examine the dynamics of price discovery between the China Securities Index 300 index and its derivative products: the futures, the index exchange‐traded fund (ETF), and the ETF options. Nonparametric nonlinear method thermal optimal path method is adopted in this study. The empirical evidence shows a clear difference in price discovery ability concerning the three products under investigation, and their rank (sorted by strength) can be presented as options, futures, and ETF. In addition, the leading phenomenon has been verified by the regression method. Furthermore, we find that out‐of‐the‐money options have the strongest price discovery ability among different moneyness option contracts. On this basis, we find that leverage is an important factor affecting the ability of price discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how to improve the prediction accuracy of stock realized volatility using a large set of predictors. Exploiting normalized positive adjusted R2 and significant t statistic of predictor obtained from the in-sample result as weight, we develop two simple and effective forecast combination methods. Using an array of 86 equity, bond, forex, futures, behavior, macroeconomic, and uncertainty predictors, we find that the proposed methodologies significantly improve stock realized volatility out-of-sample prediction performance relative to several extant forecast combinations. This result is robust for different individual forecast models, different dependent variables, and different out-of-sample periods. Furthermore, we explain that out-of-sample predictability varies significantly with changes in the number of predictors. And the existence of a strongly powerful volatility predictor affects this change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to measure the tail‐risk dependence between climate change and commodity futures markets. We utilize Morgan Stanley Capital International Climate Change Index (CCI) to serve as a proxy indicator of the stock market climate change for examining the tail‐risk spillover effect among 16 major commodity futures. Using GARCH–Copula–CoVaR framework, we show that extreme climate change has a significant tail‐risk spillover effect on commodity futures markets, in which agricultural and energy futures are affected by climate change most. We then adopt the copula‐based generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to compute the optimal hedge ratio among each pair of CCI with commodity futures, which performs well economic advantages for all 16 commodities. Compared with hedging against commodity index, CCI has a more significant hedging effect on metal and energy subindex futures. Therefore, we finally suggest an effective hedging portfolio composed of CCI and subindex futures in a significant economic sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first develop a theoretical and model‐free VXX formula in terms of Volatility Index (VIX) futures in both discrete and continuous forms. The discrete form of VXX can quantify the roll yield of VXX, which can be used to explain VXX's underperformance. Using the log‐normal Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (LOU) diffusion model, we show how the number of rolls of VIX futures affects the VXX option pricing formula and its implied volatility (IV). To further verify the nonflat IV of VXX, the VXX option pricing formula under the LOU with stochastic volatility model is also derived. Finally, we analyze their pricing performance, and the ability to forecast implied volatilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: dividend adjustments; futures pricing; mispricing; Nikkei 225 futures EN dividend adjustments futures pricing mispricing Nikkei 225 futures 2083 2084 2 11/11/21 20211201 NES 211201 We appreciate the effort that Miu and Yueh (2021; MY) have taken to analyse and comment on our paper (Qin et al., 2019). Comment on "Determinants of Nikkei futures mispricing in international markets: Dividend clustering, currency risk and transaction costs" by Peter Miu and Meng-Lan Yueh: Reply They agree with us on the fundamental point of our paper namely that to calculate a theoretical price (our COC2) and hence a mispricing series for Nikkei 225 futures, it is important to take into account the way in which Nikkei 225 companies pay dividends, which is typically clustered into a relatively short period over the year (Kato & Loewenstein, 1995). [Extracted from the article]

We use rich regulatory data on intraday transactions and end‐of‐day positions to study how high‐frequency traders (HFTs) affect futures market quality. Panel estimation evidence shows that greater participation by HFTs is strongly associated with improvements in market quality (as measured by traded bid–ask spreads and the Amihud price impact), whereas higher rates of aggressive trading, such as those observed when HFTs trade directionally to reduce their positions, produce a partially offsetting effect. We find that while futures contracts are sensitive to market uncertainty (as measured by VIX), they are more sensitive to their own price volatility. We take advantage of the 2015 change in Chicago Mercantile Exchange's daily settlement methodology for agricultural commodities to address potential endogeneity using a fixed‐effects difference‐in‐difference setup. Our results are robust to relying on alternative estimation techniques, using overly conservative (clustered) standard errors, modeling various forms of cross‐sectional and temporal dependence, and studying each market separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commodity index rolling is treated as a natural experiment and an event study of order flow costs in a wide array of futures markets is conducted. The spread between nearby and deferred futures prices decreases significantly in the early and growth phases of financialization (1991–2011), with the spreads reversing back after rolling is completed. Spread impacts disappear in the post‐financialization period (2012–2019). We argue that a dramatic increase in the supply of liquidity brought on by the transition to electronic trading in commodity futures markets is primarily responsible for the decline of roll order flow costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of People & Nature is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study explores the critical factors affecting the prices of precious metals by using Granger causality tests through collecting financial market information and network traffic volume of Google Trend keywords and the traditional financial index. It establishes a forecasting model of precious metal price to assist the procurement of precious metals as raw materials which help to reduce material costs and control risks, thus lifting a company's profits. The results reveal that the prices of precious metals have a causality relation with their own exchange‐traded funds, US 10‐year treasury rate, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average but not Google Trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the increasingly important role of clean energy metals in return and volatility spillovers across energy and foreign exchange markets. During the collapse of oil prices from 2014 to 2016, crude oil futures were at the center of the risk contagion; however, since the COVID‐19 pandemic broke out, the spillovers of clean energy metal futures have become one of the main sources of the risk contagion. Additionally, crude oil and the US dollar are the most important contributors to the spillovers, but further spillovers are emerging between the Chinese yuan, euro, and Japanese yen with clean energy metals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using more than two decades of disaggregated return data, we provide a comprehensive study of the investment benefits offered by food futures. In addition to comparing them to established passive and active investment vehicles, we investigate whether diversified investors can capitalize on including food futures into their portfolios. Our analysis is conducted within traditional and modern mean‐risk portfolio frameworks (measuring risk in terms of variance and tail size, respectively) supplemented by robust resampling techniques. Reward‐to‐risk investment performance is evaluated out of sample and by means of state‐of‐the‐art bootstrap testing. Overall, we find that food futures neither surpass standalone investments in stock, bond, and nonfood commodity markets nor do they significantly improve optimized multi‐asset portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the purportedly close relation between economic uncertainty and future stock returns in the US, we investigate the predictive role of this potential factor in the Australian stock market. Applying portfolio‐sorting strategies based on economic uncertainty exposure measured by individual stock betas, we find that uncertainty betas negatively relate to future stock returns over short‐ and medium‐term trading horizons. Moreover, common asset pricing models, including the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the Fama and French three‐, five‐, and six‐factor models, cannot explain these relations. The results remain robust when applying firm‐level Fama and MacBeth regressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop two models for index futures arbitrage that take the financing constraints faced by real‐world arbitrageurs into account. Our models predict that the price of an index futures contract and the value of its underlying index should deviate further from their theoretical cost‐of‐carry relationship when (a) the contract has a long time to go before expiry, and (b) volatility is high. The fact that these predictions enjoy considerable empirical support highlights the importance of financing constraints for explaining index futures mispricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the relationship between agricultural commodities and crude oil has become increasingly close with the promotion of biofuel policies. This study examines the dynamic correlation between global crude oil futures and seven agricultural commodity futures by applying the consistent dynamic conditional correlation and dynamic equicorrelation models. The empirical results show that the dynamic correlation between the global crude oil futures market and China's agricultural futures market is weak compared to the global agricultural futures market. In particular, soybean oil has the strongest correlation with crude oil, while Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) corn and Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange wheat have the weakest correlation with crude oil. There is an indirect linkage between crude oil futures and DCE soybean meal and DCE soybean oil. Moreover, the dynamic correlation between crude oil and agricultural commodities increased during the financial crisis, the novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) epidemic, and the crude oil crash crisis. Brent crude oil has a stronger co‐movement with China's agricultural commodities than West Texas Intermediate crude oil and can better hedge the risk of agricultural commodities. The findings of this study provide some insights into the contagion risk management of crude oil futures and agricultural futures markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

She delves into the tensions between pragmatism as an American philosophy, or even "the" American philosophy, on the one hand, and the variety of interpretations of pragmatism from an international audience, on the other hand. Mikulan rereads the social philosophies of Dewey and Jane Addams through the lens of Stengers's speculative pragmatism to articulate an ethics of refusal. At this point, rereadings of James have been helpful in transitioning from Dewey's experimental naturalism to a cosmological pluralism that works experimentally to cultivate an ongoing and unfinished pluriverse, diverging with itself all the way down to problematize the convergence by communication pursued by Dewey.[13] A second transition attempts a rereading of pragmatism that destabilizes the humanist foundations on which much pragmatist thinking is built, and which has set the stage for the reception of pragmatism in educational theory. [Extracted from the article]

This empirical exercise explores different aspects of the time‐varying linkage between the commodity and equity markets in India, focusing on base metal futures. The Dynamic Conditional Correlation model (2002) and Diebold–Yilmaz spillover index (2012) are employed to ascertain the presence, pattern, direction, and magnitude of the connectedness between the returns of base metal futures and related equity indices over the period of 2006–2019. The study builds on a less‐studied "input" channel of linkage between the two, reckoning with the economic fundamentals of demand–supply interaction. Our results show that 36% of the return forecast error variance originates from spillovers, to which the contribution of equity indices is minimal. It indicates segmentation between the two markets which offer the scope for potential diversification. Further, base metal futures are the net transmitters and equity indices are the net recipients of spillovers. Positive correlations outweigh the negative correlations, in both frequency and magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We investigate information contained in the term structure of interest rate futures contracts in the United States, Eurozone, UK, and Switzerland. We find that current forward‐spot differentials often predict return premiums and, especially, future spot rates. This predictability follows time‐series patterns common to all four markets, except around crises. Macroeconomic indicators are important determinants of predictability within and between markets. One common factor captures a significant portion of variation in predictability. No single market has a dominant share of macroeconomic indicators linked with the common predictability factor. Inflation and exchange rates arise as the most important determinants of the common factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether investor sentiment estimated by overnight returns of industry exchange‐traded funds (ETFs) affects Volatility Index (VIX) futures and stock index futures returns. Our empirical results indicate that high overnight returns of industry ETFs are associated with sentiment‐based trading. The results also show that investor sentiment, as measured by the relative comovements of overnight returns of industry ETFs, Granger‐causes VIX futures and stock index futures returns, but not vice versa. Finally, investor sentiment, as measured by the relative comovements, displays statistically and economically significant out‐of‐sample predictive power for VIX futures and stock index futures returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011 some two hundred villagers in North India set upon lower‐caste neighbors who had hoped to escape landlessness and caste‐based exclusion by claiming nearby lands available to them under India's landmark 2006 Forest Rights Act. After their homes were destroyed and their fields razed, the low‐caste villagers—who had once hoped for change—traded their new lives for old ones, and contemplated futures of indefinite violence. This article tracks a national attempt to resolve forest landlessness by looking at the events surrounding the Forest Rights Act's implementation in one village, and the array of collective action and connected conditional futures the law inspired there. I argue that such forms of collective action must be understood as operating both in their moment of occurrence and in possible actions to come, and that these possible actions establish threats that continue to shape life beyond the moment of collective action itself. Such an approach brings into view the capacity of collective action to reshape the terms of social life: as the villagers sought land rights, their mobilization both emerged from and transformed relations of caste and gender. A political economy premised on dispossession was similarly both the grounds for struggle and was transformed by new possible futures brought about by collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine key developments in trade‐related activity on global derivatives markets during the Covid‐19 pandemic. We first document significant increases in volumes and open interest. Drawing upon techniques from network theory, we next find greater market interconnectedness and notable changes in market centrality. For US exchanges, we examine their response to the increased market uncertainty and find large and more frequent changes to margin requirements. We also find a considerable drop in trader participation driven mainly by noncommercial traders along with an increase in the percent of open interest held by commercial shorts and noncommercial longs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Event risk environments may involve an elevated probability of both volatility regime shifts and sharp, abrupt price changes, either up or down. Purely direction-oriented risk management approaches are not necessarily well-suited for these market conditions. In this exploratory case study, we look at the possibility that non-directional options strategies, such as straddles and strangles, may offer interesting benefits in the management of potential event risk environments. Our research involves only the case of the S&P 500® Index from 2018 through 2020. We utilize the Market Sentiment Meter from CME Group to identify periods in which event risk may be present and particularly when the probability of sharp, abrupt price changes may be elevated. Our findings in this specific case suggest that selling option straddles and strangles during typical market conditions and then buying option straddles and strangles when the market sentiment switches to a more extreme state offers potential as an effective risk management approach for event risk. More research is needed over longer periods and for different securities, including international equity indices, to explore the usefulness of options strategies for event risk management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The themes of natural heritage and ecosystem services were preferred by stakeholders representing municipal and regional governments, with an even split between municipal and regional government stakeholders for natural heritage, and a predominance (75%) of stakeholders representing municipal government for the ecosystem services vision. We found that individual stakeholder values during the COVID-19 pandemic remained stable compared to the pre-pandemic period, with values being re-affirmed in some cases. Implications for protected area management and future directions Our study demonstrated that stakeholder values underlying protected area visions can be relatively resistant to change, even in the face of wildcard events such as a pandemic. Exploring vision stability Stakeholders had divergent views about the perceived effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on individual landscape values, with 29% of stakeholders in agreement (including strong agreement) that values had changed since the outbreak of the pandemic in Spain, and 33% in disagreement (including strong disagreement), and 38% indifferent to whether or not their values had changed (Figure 5). Stakeholders who agreed that management pathways to achieve visions changed as a result of the pandemic noted that it provided an opportunity to observe the natural recovery of ecosystems from anthropogenic impacts, and to influence future management based on these observations: ' I COVID-19 is a specific situation that can last for a few years, but the change will not be permanent. [Extracted from the article]

Access to credit is a key prerequisite for the development of smallholder agriculture. However, rural credit markets are typically characterized by market failures and smallholder credit access is limited. Resource‐providing contracts are an institutional tool to overcome credit market failures through the provision of production inputs in the form of in‐kind credit. Previous research has shown that interlinkage of contract and credit helps farmers overcome financial constraints, foster production investments, and hence increase productivities and income. However, if and how such contract schemes affect farmers' overall demand for and access to formal credit from other sources is not yet well understood. In this article, we therefore investigate the associations of the provision of in‐kind credit and farming households' formal credit demand and ability to receive formal credit. We use data of 463 oil palm producers in Ghana and show that participation in contract farming is associated with an increase in credit demand. Concerning credit approval, we find that the outstanding debt of the in‐kind credit scheme is associated with a substantially lower likelihood of credit acceptance. However, the results also suggest that farmers can fully compensate this negative effect by informing the bank about the contract, and thus the source of the debt. This indicates that debt acquired from resource‐providing contract schemes does not necessarily pose an additional credit constraint to farmers. [EconLit Citation G21, G23, O16, O17]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the intraday price discovery role of the Shanghai Stock Exchange 50 exchange‐traded fund options using transaction‐level data. Contemporaneous options trading volumes have significant and permanent price impacts on futures returns, implying that some options traders are informed. The permanent price impacts of large options trades are much greater than those of small trades. We also find that liquidity changes due to regulatory policies affect the options market's informational role. Transactions generally convey less information during special trading sessions, including post‐break and closing sessions, perhaps because informed investors prefer to hide behind high liquidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transaction tax on futures reduced trading volume during the 1920s and 1930s but had no apparent effect on volatility or open interest. The relative magnitude of the tax was highest for intermediaries and appears to have substantially reduced intra‐day trading, but it did not dramatically affect hedging activity or the level of cash or futures prices. Pit traders were particularly distressed by a 400% increase in the tax rate in 1932 and effectively widened spreads by avoiding trades at the minimum price increment. This doubling of the minimum tick size was formally implemented in exchange rules 1 year later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One session options (OSOs) fulfill the criteria for a lottery‐type asset; a low price coupled with a relatively small probability of a large payoff. We examine trading behavior for intraday OSO contracts on the Australian 3‐Year Treasury bond future. We find that volume is higher on days with a major macroeconomic announcement, and concentrated in the time before data release. Volume tends to be higher when there is a greater difference of opinion concerning the announcement outcome or when the level of economic policy uncertainty is higher. We propose that 'differences of opinions' best explain OSO trading behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant and insurgent socio‐climatic imaginaries struggle for influence over how the future is envisioned. Africanfuturist imaginaries have huge potential to unsettle racialised and gendered climate narratives. In this article I use Nnedi Okorafor's novel Who Fears Death in order to challenge mainstream climate imaginaries and to imagine new forms of being and becoming in the context of climate change. Drawing on Achille Mbembe's concepts of biopolitics and necropolitics, as well as black feminist traditions of imagining new genres of the human, I argue that Okorafor's "wild necropolitics" illuminates how the forces of "wild nature" have become central features of the deployment of the means of destroying life, especially in the context of climate change. By examining the motifs of change, violence, wilderness and narration, I argue that reading and writing different stories about alternative climate futures is essential to the process of finding new ways of being and becoming human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012 USDA began releasing crop reports during trading hours. Prior reports were released during a trading halt, and in the electronic trading platform traders competed in a batch auction for 2 h. Compared to the current real‐time release policy, the batch auction reduced speed advantage, lowered market volatility, and improved liquidity around report releases, at the cost of delaying price discovery. The results reported here support the argument that the development of a shorter batch auction could improve on the lengthy price discovery process while maintaining the batch auction's other advantages. These findings are relevant to not only developed countries with well‐established exchanges and public information systems, but to developing countries who have recently launched or are planning to launch futures commodity markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract farming is receiving renewed attention in research and policy in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia, as countries continue to undergo varied agrarian transitions and agri‐food production has become increasingly regionalized. In northeast Laos, previously isolated upland communities have experienced rapid transformations resulting from contract production of hybrid maize, mainly for industrial feed processing and livestock in Vietnam. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork in the Lao‐Vietnamese borderlands, this article explores the quasi‐"developmental" functions assumed by cross‐border traders, in the context of unfulfilled rural policy objectives, in which these "micro‐investors" provide informal extension and infrastructure to enable agricultural commercialization. The article examines the extent to which this dynamic is adequately captured by notions of patronage, or whether subtle mutual dependencies are at work, as livelihoods are rebalanced between subsistence and commodity crops in remote border landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]