Abstract

Seyed-Ali Hosseini-Yekani, Mansour Zibaei and David E. Allen

In this paper an attempt is made to determine the most suitable agricultural commodities to be adopted for establishing a futures market in Iran. Two different approaches are adopted: the first involves identifying factors that contribute significantly to the success or failure of existing agricultural commodities futures contracts in established futures markets. The second involves simulating the hedging performance of potential commodities to determine the optimum contract choice. The results suggest that saffron, pistachios and rice are the three most feasible commodities to be adopted in order to establish commodity futures trading in Iran.