What Explains Risk Premia in Crude Oil Futures?

Abstract

This paper studies the existence of risk premia in crude oil futures prices with simple regression and Bayesian VAR models. It also studies the importance of three main risk premia models in explaining and forecasting the risk premia in practice. Whilst the existence of the premia and the validity of the models can be established at certain time points, it turns out that the choice of sample period has a considerable effect on he results. Hence, the risk premia are highly timevarying. The study also establishes a model, based on speculative positions in the futures markets, which has some predictive power for future oil spot prices.

Keywords: forecasting, oil futures, risk premia, Bayesian VAR models

JEL Classification: C01, C32, C53