Wheat markets stand out among other major crop commodity markets because pricing at the first point of exchange—typically a grain handling facility—is differentiated on specific quality characteristics. Moreover, the premiums and discounts that elevators offer to obtain grain of specific quality can be significant. The relative importance of quality premiums and discounts to farm-level production and marketing decisions demonstrate a need to quantitatively measure and explain factors that affect elevators' wheat-quality pricing decisions. This study develops an informed expectation model of elevators' quality-based pricing strategies and empirically estimates the model from a lengthy dataset of weekly price observations. I find empirical evidence that elevators use linear pricing schedules, but more aggressively discount wheat with protein levels lower than a baseline than reward higher-protein wheat. The results also indicate that weather characteristics, futures contract price indicators, and USDA Crop Progress reports are contributors to predicting the new crop protein premiums and discounts, and that out-of-sample accuracy for predicting how grain elevators will value wheat protein ranges between 70% and 80%.

中文翻译：

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质量预测：预测市场何时以及在多大程度上重视高蛋白小麦

小麦市场在其他主要农作物商品市场中脱颖而出，因为在第一个交易点（通常是谷物处理设施）的定价因特定质量特征而异。此外，电梯为获得特定质量的谷物而提供的溢价和折扣可能很大。质量溢价和折扣对农场级生产和营销决策的相对重要性表明需要定量测量和解释影响电梯小麦质量定价决策的因素。本研究开发了一个基于质量的电梯定价策略的知情预期模型，并根据每周价格观察的冗长数据集对该模型进行了经验估计。我发现经验证据表明电梯使用线性定价表，但更积极地打折蛋白质水平低于基线的小麦，而不是奖励高蛋白小麦。结果还表明，天气特征、期货合约价格指标和美国农业部作物进展报告是预测新作物蛋白质溢价和折价的因素，并且预测谷物升降机如何评估小麦蛋白的样本外准确度介于 70 % 和 80%。