Stochastic speculative price.
Because a commodity like wheat can be carried forward from one period to the next, speculative arbitrage serves to link its prices at different points of time. Since, however, the size of the harvest depends on complicated probability processes impossible to forecast with certainty, the minimal model for understanding market behavior must involve stochastic processes. The present study, on the basis of the axiom that it is the expected rather than the known-for-certain prices which enter into all arbitrage relations and carryover decisions, determines the behavior of price as the solution to a stochastic-dynamic-programming problem. The resulting stationary time series possesses an ergodic state and normative properties like those often observed for real-world bourses.
Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
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Samuelson