US biofuel market persistence and mean reversion properties

Abstract

This paper investigates the market persistence and mean reversion properties for corn, bioethanol and gasoline prices in the US biofuel industry, evaluating long memory effects with fractional integration techniques from January 1982 to May 2022 with USDA data. Empirical results show evidence of no mean reversion properties for the prices in the three series though some support of it is found when the differences of bioethanol and gasoline are taken with respect to corn. Thus, external shocks in the original series are expected to remain persistent and would require additional policy measures to recover the original trend. Furthermore, the impact of Covid on the time series has been analyzed by comparing the scenarios pre and post pandemic, finding evidence of no major changes in the integration orders in all the series under analysis.