In August 2018, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ceased its practice of early media access during lockup, in which the news media have access to crop and livestock reports ahead of scheduled announcements. News media no longer have a 90-min window to digest and write custom reports and are now subject to the same information distribution rules as the public. We examine the impact of this regulatory change on the trading of agricultural commodity futures. We assess changes in market quality (e.g., liquidity, volatility, information asymmetry, and high-frequency trading activity) around news announcements before and after the regulatory change. Although the majority of our market quality proxies react to USDA news releases, they are not statistically different before and after the regulatory change. The overall results show that ending the practice of early media access lockup does not have a significant economic impact on agricultural futures trading around USDA news releases.

2018 年 8 月，美国农业部 (USDA) 在锁定期间停止了早期媒体访问的做法，其中新闻媒体可以在预定公告之前获得作物和牲畜报道。新闻媒体不再有 90 分钟的时间来消化和撰写自定义报道，现在与公众一样受制于相同的信息发布规则。我们研究了这一监管变化对农产品期货交易的影响。我们围绕监管变化前后的新闻公告评估市场质量的变化（例如，流动性、波动性、信息不对称和高频交易活动）。尽管我们的大多数市场质量指标都会对美国农业部的新闻发布做出反应，但在监管变化之前和之后，它们在统计上没有差异。