Futures Markets and the Theory of the Firm Under Price Uncertainty
研究存在期货市场时竞争性企业在价格不确定性下的行为，发现生产决策仅取决于期货价格和投入成本，而主观价格分布只影响期货交易参与，并指出期货市场的重要社会效益是消除因生产者主观预期变化导致的产出波动。
This paper examines the behavior of a competitive firm under price uncertainty where a futures market exists for the commodity produced by the firm. Working with the Sandmo approach, we found that production decisions depend only on the futures market price and input costs; the subjective distribution of future spot price affects only the firm's involvement in futures trading. Conditions are then determined under which a firm will either hedge, speculate by buying futures contracts, or speculate by selling futures contracts. The results indicate that an important social benefit derived from the existence of a futures market is to eliminate output fluctuations due to variation in producers' subjective distributions of future spot price.