Gupta, RanganPierdzioch, Christian2025-02-122025-02-122024-09-23Gupta, R.; Pierdzioch, C. Multi-Task Forecasting of the Realized Volatilities of Agricultural Commodity Prices. Mathematics 2024, 12, 2952. https://DOI.org/10.3390/math12182952.2227-739010.3390/math12182952http://hdl.handle.net/2263/100748DATA AVAILABILITY : The data used to derive the results documented in this research are available from the authors upon reasonable request.Motivated by the comovement of realized volatilities (RVs) of agricultural commodity prices, we study whether multi-task forecasting algorithms improve the accuracy of out-of-sample forecasts of 15 agricultural commodities during the sample period from July 2015 to April 2023. We consider alternative multi-task stacking algorithms and variants of the multivariate Lasso estimator. We find evidence of in-sample predictability but scarce evidence that multi-task forecasting improves out-of-sample forecasts relative to a classic univariate heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR)-RV model. This lack of systematic evidence of out-of-sample forecasting gains is corroborated by extensive robustness checks, including an in-depth study of the quantiles of the distributions of the RVs and subsample periods that account for increases in the total spillovers among the RVs. We also study an extended model that features the RVs of energy commodities and precious metals, but our conclusions remain unaffected. Besides offering important lessons for future research, our results are interesting for financial market participants, who rely on accurate forecasts of RVs when solving portfolio optimization and derivatives pricing problems, and policymakers, who need accurate forecasts of RVs when designing policies to mitigate the potential adverse effects of a rise in the RVs of agricultural commodity prices and the concomitant economic and political uncertainty.en© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.Agricultural commoditiesRealized volatilityMulti-task forecastingSDG-02: Zero hungerSDG-08: Decent work and economic growthArticle