Storage, Slow Transport, and the Law of One Price: Theory with Evidence from Nineteenth-Century U.S. Corn Markets

Andrew Coleman
Additional contact information
Andrew Coleman: Motu Economics

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2009, vol. 91, issue 2, 332-350

Abstract: This paper argues that localized price spikes should be a regular feature of competitive commodity markets. It develops a rational expectations model of physical arbitrage in which trade takes time, and shows that inventory management plays a crucial role in the way regional prices are determined. In equilibrium, arbitrageurs choose export quantities to ensure inventories in the importing center regularly fall to 0. They earn enough profits from high prices on these occasions to offset small losses at other times. An analysis of detailed data from Chicago and New York corn markets provides empirical support for the model. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/rest.91.2.332 link to full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:restat:v:91:y:2009:i:2:p:332-350

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().