The heterogeneity of information and beliefs among operators in the commodity markets.

Summary This Ph.D. project aims to study the heterogeneity of information and beliefs among speculators on commodity markets to tackle the issues of the risk premium and volatility puzzles. The first step was to introduce information asymmetry in a storage model. The output is an efficient market where it is possible to distinguish a random informational effect from a deterministic physical effect. The second step is to estimate empirically the parameters of a modified version of the theoretical model above. The rationality hypothesis is relaxed."Chartists," who are trend-followers, are introduced. The goal of this paper is to estimate their influence on asset pricing. The chosen market for the empirical study is the Henry Hub natural gas market. The third step is a model where rational agents and bounded-rational agents interact together in a commodity market. This last chapter shows how trend-followers in the futures market can destabilize the spot market.