Selected Writings of Holbrook Working.

WORKING, Holbrook.

$2,500.00

Item Number: 126837

Chicago: Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, 1977.

First edition of Working’s selected writings. Octavo, original illustrated wrappers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “To Bill Jones, with warm good wishes, Holbrook Working.” In near fine condition.

American professor of economics and statistics Holbrook Working was best known for his theories on hedging, future prices, market maker behavior, and the theory of storage (including the Working curve which plots the difference between short term and long term grain futures prices against current inventory). Working disagreed with Keynes's backwardation theory of futures prices, which argued that short hedgers (farmers) drive down futures prices because of their demand for price insurance. He, instead, argued that there could be hedgers on both sides of the market and that hedging was essentially not a risk reduction technique, but "speculation in the basis" which allows informed traders and commodity dealers to profit from their knowledge of future changes in the difference between futures and spot prices. Selected Writings of Holbrook Working contains his Theory of the Inverse Carrying Charge in Future Markets, Price Effects of Future Trading, Future Trading and Hedging, Price Effects of Scalping and Day Trading, and Economic Functions of Future Markets.