conditional dependence structure between oil prices and exchange rates a copula garch approach abstract we study the conditional dependence structure between crude oil prices and u s dollar exchange rates using a copula garch approach various copula functions of the elliptical archimedean and quadratic families are used to model the underlying dependence structure in both bearish and bullish market phases over the 2000 2011 period we find evidence of significant and symmetric dependence for almost all the oil exchange rate pairs considered the rise in the price of oil is found to be associated with the depreciation of the dollar moreover we show that student t copulas best capture the extreme dependence and that taking the extreme comovement into account leads to improve the accuracy of var forecasts our main results remain unchanged when considering alternative garch type specifications and the crisis period but are sensitive to the use of raw returns

contagion volatility persistence and volatility spill overs the case of energy markets during the european financial crisis the aim of this paper is to investigate if and to what extent events in financially troubled eu markets greece ireland and portugal affected energy prices during the eu financial crisis more specifically i we test for contagion effects of bond prices on energy commodity prices ii we examine whether the nature of energy price volatility is affected and iii we investigate whether bond volatility from the financially distressed eu markets spills over to energy commodity return volatility our results indicate the existence of significant contagion effects notable changes in the nature of energy commodity volatility during the eu financial crisis and spill over effects the results are robust to the use of short term yields instead of long term bond price changes and to the inclusion of spain and italy in the sample

oil and foreign exchange market tail dependence and risk spillovers for mena emerging and developed countries vmd decomposition based copulas abstract this paper examines the short and medium run dependence structures between oil and currency markets for mena other developing and developed countries using a novel multiresolution decomposition method namely the variational mode decomposition vmd along with a battery of time invariant and time varying symmetric and asymmetric copula functions further we assess the downside and upside short and medium run risk spillovers from oil to u s exchange rate returns and vice versa by computing the conditional value at risk covar risk measures before the copula estimations we apply the spillover index of diebold and yilmaz 2012 and network diagrams to identify and select the currencies that are the most significant net contributors or net receivers of returns from to the oil currency markets the copula results show strong evidence of time varying and high average tail dependence between oil returns and the fx markets which are net transmitters to oil for the short and medium time horizons on the other hand we find average and relatively low dynamic dependence between oil and the net receiver currencies regardless of the time horizons moreover there is evidence of up and down risk asymmetric systemic risks from oil to currencies and vice versa for some countries in the short and medium run horizons finally the risk spillovers are asymmetric over time and investment horizons these results have several important implications for hedging strategies and diversification benefits for oil and fx traders and institutional investors

modeling the co movements between crude oil and refined petroleum markets abstract in this paper we investigate two types of asymmetries i e the asymmetry in the lower and upper tail dependences and the asymmetry in the propagation of crisis bubble between crude oil market and refined petroleum markets based on copula models thirteen copula models with different types of dependence structures and time varying dependence parameters are considered we find that in general the malm copula fits our sample data best based on aic criterion we find that lower and upper tail dependences are both positive indicating that crude oil and refined product markets tend to move together using the asymmetric copulas we find asymmetry in tail dependence between crude oil and heating oil returns and that between crude oil and jet fuel returns interestingly upper tail dependence is significantly greater than the lower tail dependence for the pre crisis period while the result is reversed for the post crisis period finally although our data prefers the nonexchangeable malm copula the asymmetry in the propagation of crisis bubble between crude oil and refined product returns is very weak

detecting multiple breaks in financial market volatility dynamics the paper evaluates the performance of several recently proposed tests for structural breaks in the conditional variance dynamics of asset returns the tests apply to the class of arch and sv type processes as well as data driven volatility estimators using high frequency data in addition to testing for the presence of breaks the statistics identify the number and location of multiple breaks we study the size and power of the new tests for detecting breaks in the conditional variance under various realistic univariate heteroscedastic models change point hypotheses and sampling schemes the paper concludes with an empirical analysis using data from the stock and fx markets for which we find multiple breaks associated with the asian and russian financial crises these events resulted in changes in the dynamics of volatility of asset returns in the samples prior and post the breaks copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

are electricity prices affected by the us dollar to euro exchange rate the spanish case abstract the objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between spanish electricity spot prices and the us dollar euro usd euro exchange rate during the period 2005 2007 taking into account the study of the association between dollar and oil prices in order to better understand the evolution of the former over time the first finding in this study is that spanish electricity spots prices the usd euro exchange rate and oil prices are cointegrated therefore there is a long run equilibrium relationship between the three variables short run relationships have been detected between oil prices and spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate in the sense that spanish electricity prices and usd euro exchange rate are affected by oil prices in the short run there is a transmission of volatility between usd euro exchange rate and oil prices to spanish electricity prices so although spanish electricity prices are not affected in level by the movements of usd euro exchange rate they are in volatility in this kind of scenario the conclusions confirm that for countries so dependent on external causes as spain one possible solution for guarantying the energy security would be the promotion of the renewable energies therefore we cannot ignore the impact in the internal expenses of the cost of installation and generation of green energies so there must be a balance between the increase in renewables and the reasonable market price of the electricity

structural breaks dynamic correlations asymmetric volatility transmission and hedging strategies for petroleum prices and usd exchange rate abstract this paper investigates the influence of structural changes on the asymmetry of volatility spillovers asset allocation and portfolio diversification between the usd euro exchange market and each of six major spot petroleum markets including wti europe brent kerosene gasoline and propane using the bivariate dcc egarch model with and without structural change dummies the results provide evidence of significant asymmetric volatility spillovers between the u s dollar exchange rate and the petroleum markets moreover the model with the structural breaks reduces the degree of volatility persistence and leads to more appropriate hedging and asset allocation strategies for all pairs considered thus the findings have important implications for financial risk management

sacrifice and stigma reducing free riding in cults communes and other collectives this paper presents an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions the analysis does not presuppose any special motives for religious activity rather religion is modeled as a club good that displays positive returns to participatory crowding the analysis demonstrates that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma self sacrifice and bizarre behavioral restrictions the model also addresses sacrifice in nonreligious social clubs fraternities communes political parties work groups and families

non stationarities in financial time series the long range dependence and the igarch effects we give the theoretical basis of a possible explanation for two stylized facts observed in long log return series the long range dependence lrd in volatility and the integrated garch igarch both these effects can be explained theoretically if one assumes that the data are nonstationary

modeling returns and volatility transmission between oil price and us nigeria exchange rate article i nfo this paper models returns and volatility transmission between oil price op and us nigeria exchange rate exr consequently it provides five main innovations i it analyzes op and exr using the recently devel oped test by narayan and popp 2010 np which allows for two structural breaks in the data series ii it employs the narayan and liu 2011 nl garch unit root test to evaluate robustness of np test iii it con siders the newly developed var garch model to capture the spillover effects in the returns and volatility of op and exr iv it modifies the var garch model to account for structural breaks obtained from the np procedure and v using the results obtained from the var garch model it examines the optimal weights of holding oil and foreign exchange fx assets and also computes the hedging ratios in the presence of oil risk based on the np and nl tests it finds robust structural breaks that coincide with the period of global fi nancial crisis as well as period of fx crisis in nigeria also it establishes a bidirectional returns and spillover transmission between oil and fx markets finally its findings reveal evidence of hedging effectiveness involving oil and fx markets in nigeria and thus the inclusion of oil into a diversified portfolio of fx will improve its risk adjusted return performance

on the origins of property rights conflict and production in the state of nature i analyse the emergence of property rights in a model of conflict and production in the absence of institutions of enforcement the population of agents evolves dynamically through conflicts for possession of factor goods among pairs of randomly matched agents conflicts are incomplete information wars of attrition with an agent s type consisting of his or her independently drawn valuation of the prize and cost of competing for it i prove equilibrium existence and show that in the steady state of the game the population sorts into two stable groups resource haves and have nots in accordance with a known function of their primitive types

oil and asset classes implied volatilities investment strategies and hedging effectiveness abstract building on the increased interest in oil prices and other financial assets this paper examines the dynamic conditional correlations among their implied volatility indices we then proceed to the examination of the optimal hedging strategies and optimal portfolio weights for implied volatility portfolios between oil and fourteen asset volatilities which belong to four different asset classes stocks commodities exchange rates and macroeconomic conditions the results suggest that the oil price implied volatility index ovx is highly correlated with the us and emerging stock market volatility indices whereas the lowest correlations are observed with the implied volatilities of gold and the euro dollar exchange rate hedge ratios indicate that vix is the least useful implied volatility index to hedge against oil implied volatility finally we show that investors can benefit substantially by adjusting their portfolios based on the dynamic weights and hedge ratios obtained from the dynamic conditional correlation models although a trade off exists between the level of risk reduction and portfolio profitability

the extreme value in crude oil and us dollar markets abstract this study constructs a flexible range based volatility model by considering extreme value information to explore the volatility and dependence structures between the oil price and the us dollar exchange rate an asset allocation strategy is implemented to evaluate the economic value and confirm the efficiency of this model the empirical results indicate that the use of extreme value information can not only enhance the explanatory power of volatility structures but also sort out the asymmetric volatility effect in the oil market besides investors can obtain extra benefits of between 72 and 713 annualized basis points by incorporating extreme value information into their asset allocation strategies less risk averse investors can generate higher benefits the empirical results have potentially important implications for asset allocation and risk management

metal volatility in presence of oil and interest rate shocks abstract this study uses three two factor volatility models of the garch family to examine the volatility behavior of three strategic commodities gold silver and copper in the presence of crude oil and interest rate shocks the results of the standard garch models suggest that gold and silver have almost the same volatility persistence which is greater than that of copper the cgarch estimates indicate that the short run transitory component of volatility converges to zero much faster for copper than for gold and silver in this sequence however the permanent volatility component demonstrates equally strong persistence in the long run for all three metals the egarch results suggest that the leverage effect is present and significant for copper only implying that gold and silver can be good investment in anticipation of bad times past oil shock does not impact all three metals similarly monetary policy and to leaser extent the oil shocks have calming effects on precious metals but not on copper if the t bill rate is used crises such as the 2003 iraq war heighten metal volatility these results have implications for derivatives valuations using gold as a reserve asset risk analysis and for the commodity exporting countries and commodity producing firms

modelling oil price volatility with structural breaks in this paper we provide two main innovations i we analyze oil prices of two prominent markets namely west texas intermediate wti and brent using the two recently developed tests by narayan and popp 2010 and liu and narayan 2010 both of which allow for two structural breaks in the data series and ii the latter method is modified to include both symmetric and asymmetric volatility models we identify two structural breaks that occur in 1990 and 2008 which coincidentally correspond to the iraqi kuwait conflict and the global financial crisis respectively we find evidence of persistence and leverage effects in the oil price volatility while further extensions can be pursued the consideration of asymmetric effects as well as structural breaks should not be jettisoned when modelling oil price volatility

printing and protestants an empirical test of the role of printing in the reformation the causes of the protestant reformation have long been debated this paper seeks to revive and econometrically test the theory that the spread of the reformation is linked to the spread of the printing press i test this theory by analyzing data on the spread of the press and the reformation at the city level an econometric analysis that instruments for omitted variable bias with a city s distance from mainz the birthplace of printing suggests that cities with at least one printing press by 1500 were at minimum 29 percentage points more likely to be protestant by 1600

the logic of financial westernization in the middle east abstract in the 19th century financial reforms in the middle east included the legalization of interest the establishment of secular courts and banking regulations all based on western models exploring why foreign institutions were transplanted this article shows that islamic law blocked evolutionary paths that might have generated financial modernization through indigenous means sources of rigidity included 1 the islamic law of commercial partnerships which limited enterprise continuity 2 the islamic inheritance system which restrained capital accumulation 3 the waqf system which inhibited resource pooling and 4 islam s traditional aversion to the concept of legal personhood which hampered private organizations

adopting a new religion the case of protestantism in 16th century germany using a dataset of territories and cities of the holy roman empire in the sixteenth century this article investigates the determinants of adoption and diffusion of protestantism as a state religion a territory s distance to wittenberg the city where martin luther taught is a major determinant of adoption this finding is consistent with a theory of strategic neighbourhood interactions introducing the reformation was a risky enterprise for territorial lords and had higher prospects of success if powerful neighbouring states committed to the new faith the actual spatial and temporal patterns of expansion of protestantism are analysed in a panel dataset

sect subsidy and sacrifice an economist s view of ultra orthodox jews israeli ultra orthodox men study full time in yeshiva until age 40 on average why do fathers with families in poverty choose yeshiva over work draft deferments subsidize yeshiva attendance yet attendance typically continues long after exemption fertility rates are high tfr 7 6 and rising a social interaction approach explains these anomalies yeshiva attendance signals commitment to the community which provides mutual insurance to members prohibitions strengthen communities by effectively taxing real wages inducing high fertility historically the incursion of markets into traditional communities produces ultra orthodoxy subsidies induce dramatic reductions in labor supply and unparalleled increases in fertility illustrating extreme responses social groups may have to interventions

population technology and fragmentation the european miracle revisited abstract the effects of political fragmentation on long run development seem to have changed over the course of human history technological leaders used to be empires but the industrial revolution started in the fragmented europe this paper sets up a model to help us think about this puzzle there are two sets of mechanisms at play a standard scale effect which benefits unified regions since technology is a non rivalrous good and several competition effects both negative like wasteful armies and positive incentives to invest in new technologies we apply the model to analyze the preindustrial divergence between china and europe

oil prices and real exchange rates in this paper we investigate the long run relationship between real oil prices and real exchange rates by using a monthly panel of g7 countries from 1972 1 to 2005 10 we first test whether exchange rates are cointegrated with real oil prices it is shown that real oil prices may have been the dominant source of real exchange rate movements and that there is a link between real oil prices and real exchange rates we then examine the ability of real oil prices to forecast future real exchange returns panel predictive regression estimates suggest that real oil prices have significant forecasting power the out of sample prediction performances demonstrate greater predictability over longer horizons

people s opium religion and economic attitudes since max weber there has been an active debate on the impact of religion on people s economic attitudes much of the existing evidence however is based on cross country studies in which this impact is confounded by differences in other institutional factors we use the worldvalues surveys to id entify the relationship between intensity of religious beliefs and economic attitudes controlling for country fixed effects we study several economic attitudes towardcooperation the government working women legal rules thriftiness andthe market economy we also distinguish across religious denominations differentiating on whether a religion is dominant in a country we find that on average religious beliefs are associated with good economic attitudes where good is defined as conducive to higher per capita income andgrowth yet religious people tendto be more racist andless favorable with respect to working women these effects differ across religious denominations overall we find that christian religions are more positively associatedwith attitudes conducive to economic growth r 2003 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification a1 e0 n4 z1

an investigation of oil prices impact on sovereign credit default swaps in russia and venezuela abstract in this paper we study the impact of oil price returns on sovereign credit default swaps cds spreads for two major oil producers russia and venezuela using daily spreads from 2008 to 2015 through a time varying transition probabilities markov switching model our results show that crude oil price and its volatility are critical determinants of their sovereign debt we highlight some differences between the two countries depending on the state of the economy moreover global and local factors play a major role in the determination of sovereign cds spreads

modeling volatility and correlations between emerging market stock prices and the prices of copper oil and wheat abstract increased financial integration between countries and the financialization of commodity markets are providing investors with new ways to diversify their investment portfolios this paper uses varma agarch and dcc agarch models to model volatilities and conditional correlations between emerging market stock prices copper prices oil prices and wheat prices the dynamic conditional correlation model is found to fit the data the best and used to generate dynamic conditional correlations hedge ratios and optimal portfolio weights emerging market stock prices and oil prices display leverage effects where negative residuals tend to increase the variance conditional volatility more than positive ones correlations between these assets increased considerably after 2008 and have yet to return to their pre 2008 values on average oil provides the cheapest hedge for emerging market stock prices while copper is the most expensive but given the variability in the hedge ratios one should probably not put too much emphasis on average hedge ratios

structural breaks dynamic correlations and hedge and safe havens for stock and foreign exchange markets in greater china this study investigates the dynamic relationship and hedging strategy between stock and foreign exchange markets in greater china for the period 22 july 2005 to 30 november 2015 using the dcc garch model with and without structural breaks the results provide strong evidence of negative time varying correlations between these two markets in greater china consistent with the stock oriented models of exchange rates moreover adding structural breaks reduces the degree of volatility persistence for all considered markets and can provide more accurate hedge and safe haven properties of the us dollar against greater china stock markets the findings have several important implications for portfolio risk managers international investors and policymakers

oil prices exchange rates and emerging stock markets abstract while two different streams of literature exist investigating 1 the relationship between oil prices and emerging market stock prices and 2 the relationship between oil prices and exchange rates relatively little is known about the dynamic relationship between oil prices exchange rates and emerging market stock prices this paper proposes and estimates a structural vector autoregression model to investigate the dynamic relationship between these variables impulse responses are calculated in two ways standard and the recently developed projection based methods the model supports stylized facts in particular positive shocks to oil prices tend to depress emerging market stock prices and us dollar exchange rates in the short run the model also captures stylized facts regarding movements in oil prices a positive oil production shock lowers oil prices while a positive shock to real economic activity increases oil prices there is also evidence that increases in emerging market stock prices increase oil prices

forecasting the volatility of crude oil futures using har type models with structural breaks abstract we introduce sixteen har type volatility models with structural breaks and estimate their parameters by applying 5 min high frequency transaction data for wti crude oil futures we find significant structural breaks in the volatility of crude oil futures additionally the historical realized volatility continuous sample path variation negative realized semivariance signed jump signed semi jump and leverage components contain substantial and salient information for forecasting the volatility of crude oil futures then we use loss functions to assess the forecasting performance of these sixteen new models and finally rank these models using the promethee ii method our results indicate that different models exhibit different predictive power in forecasting the 1 day 1 week and 1 month volatility of crude oil futures of the new har type models the new har rsv model performs best at forecasting the 1 day and 1 month volatilities whereas the new har cj best forecasts the 1 week volatility

dynamic cyclical comovements between oil prices and us gdp a wavelet perspective abstract in this paper we use wavelet analysis to investigate the cyclical comovements between crude oil prices and us gdp taking into account the decline in the volatility of us gdp growth that has occurred since the mid 1980s our main findings suggest that before 1984 q1 the crude oil prices were leading the us gdp cycle by 3 quarters and granger cause us gdp in contrast after 1984 q1 the crude oil prices were lagging the us business cycle and a reverse causality is found to run from us gdp to oil prices the multiscale granger causality tests globally corroborate theses results

trade wars and trade talks when governments meet in the international arena their actions reflect the political situations at home previous studies of trade relations have focused on governments that are immune from political pressures and that act as benevolent servants of the public interest here we introduce domestic politics into the analysis of international economic relations we study the interactions between national leaders who are concerned both with providing a high standard of living to the general electorate and collecting campaign contributions from special interest groups our analysis sheds light on the determinants of the structure of protection in non cooperative and cooperative policy equilibria

dynamic link between oil prices and exchange rates a non linear approach abstract we explore the non linear relationship between crude oil prices and exchange rates of major currencies from quantitative and structural perspectives by utilizing bivariate normal mixture model the correlation coefficients between oil prices and exchange rates demonstrate that their dependences typically start from 2004 then dynamically change over time then we investigate whether business cycle and oil price shocks as two possible exogenous factors affect the dependence structure of oil fx linkage we find significant structural heterogeneity during economic expansion while little evidence of heterogeneity in recession this finding provides alternative interpretations for the enhanced dependence between oil prices and exchange rates and generates implications of financialization in commodity market in terms of oil price shocks kilian 2009 the normal mixture model captures significant heterogeneity implying that unstable oil fx dependence structure is frequently associated with oil aggregate demand shocks and oil specific demand shocks with an emphasis on the dynamic weights of two underlying states we interestingly find that structural heterogeneities coincide with a variety of geopolitical and economic events the application of normal mixture not only provide us knowledge of non linear relationship between oil prices and exchange rates but also guidance for investors in risk management and portfolio diversification complementary to the traditional portfolio theory based on normal distribution

the empire is dead long live the empire long run persistence of trust and corruption in the bureaucracy we hypothesise that the habsburg empire with its well respected administration increased citizens trust in local public services in several eastern european countries communities on both sides of the long gone habsburg border have shared common formal institutions for a century now we use a border specification and a two dimensional geographic regression discontinuity design to identify from individuals living within a restricted band around the former border we find that historical habsburg affiliation increases current trust and reduces corruption in courts and police falsification tests of spuriously moved borders geographic and pre existing differences and interpersonal trust corroborate a genuine habsburg effect

the economic value of co movement between oil price and exchange rate using copula based garch models article i nfo the us dollar is used as the primary currency of international crude oil trading as such the recent substantial depreciation in the us dollar has resulted in a corresponding increase in crude oil prices in addition oil price and exchange rate returns have been shown to be skewed and leptokurtic and to exhibit an asymmetric or tail dependence structure therefore this study proposes dynamic copula based garch models to explore the dependence structure between the oil price and the us dollar exchange rate more importantly an asset allocation strategy is implemented to evaluate economic value and confirm the efficiency of the copula based garch models in terms of out of sample forecasting performance a dynamic strategy based on the cgarch model with the student t copula exhibits greater economic benefits than static and other dynamic strategies in addition the positive feedback trading activities are statistically significant within the oil market but this information does not enhance the economic benefits from the perspective of an asset allocation decision finally a more risk averse investor generates a higher fee for switching from a static strategy to a dynamic strategy based on copula based garch models

the economic effects of the protestant reformation testing the weber hypothesis in the german lands following max weber many theories have hypothesized that protestantism should have favored economic development with its religious heterogeneity the holy roman empire presents an ideal testing ground for this hypothesis using population figures of 272 cities in the years 1300 1900 i find no effects of protestantism on economic growth the finding is precisely estimated robust to the inclusion of various controls and does not depend on data selection or small sample size denominational differences in fertility behavior and literacy are unlikely to be major confounding factors protestantism has no effect when interacted with other likely determinants of economic development instrumental variables estimates considering the potential endogeneity of religious choice are similar to the ols results

conflict defense spending and the number of nations abstract this paper provides a formal model of endogenous border formation and choice of defense spending in a world with international conflict we examine both the case of democratic governments and of dictatorships the model is consistent with three observations first breakup of countries should follow a reduction in the likelihood of international conflicts second the number of regional conflicts between smaller countries may increase as a result of the breakup of larger countries third the size of the peace dividend the reduction in defense spending in a more peaceful world is limited by the process of country breakup

exogenous shocks dynamic correlations and portfolio risk management for the asian emerging and other global developed and emerging stock markets this study examines the potential influence of exogenous shocks on time varying correlations and portfolio strategies between the asian emerging and other global stock markets including developed a

religious conversion in colonial africa within economics there has been a recent effort to better understand the notion of culture typically defined as beliefs values and norms held by individuals empirical work has focused on identifying systematic cultural differences between individuals from different ethnic and national backgrounds more recently attention has turned to the historical origins of cultural differences e g luigi guiso paolo sapienza and luigi zingales 2008 nathan nunn and leonard wantchekon 2009 colonial africa provides a natural laboratory to examine how an external intervention can have lasting impacts on people s beliefs and values this study examines the effect of european missionary activities in colonial africa on the subsequent evolution of culture as measured by religious beliefs the empirical results show that descendants of ethnic groups that experienced greater missionary contact are today more likely to self identify as christian this correlation provides evidence that foreign missionaries altered the religious beliefs of africans and that these beliefs persist as they are passed on from parents to children put differently the results show that historic events can have a lasting impact on culture the findings also provide rare empirical evidence of the historical determinants of longrun religious conversion studies of conversion typically focus on contemporary determinants see jason hwang and robert barro 2007 and the references therein although a number of studies have examined the long term impacts of missionary activities they have not considered their long run impacts on religious beliefs and values e g robert d woodberry 2004 one of the few papers that consider a historical determinant of long run conversion is by murat religious conversion in colonial africa

luther and suleyman this paper emphasizes that the evolution of religious institutions in europe was influenced by the expansionary threat posed by the ottoman empire between the mid 15th century and the early 17th century various historical accounts have suggested that the ottomans rise helped the protestant reform movement as well as its various offshoots such as zwinglianism anabaptism and calvinism survive their infancy and mature utilizing a comprehensive dataset on violent conflicts for the period between 1451 and 1650 i find strong empirical support for the idea that ottoman military engagements in continental europe lowered the number and extent of violent conflicts among and within the european states ottomans influence in europe extended to the feud between the protestant reformers and the catholic establishment during the time between the birth of lutheranism and the end of the thirty years war the likelihood and timing of military engagements between the protestant reformers and the counter reformation forces depended negatively and statistically significantly on ottomans military activities in europe

the empirical relationship between energy futures prices and exchange rates abstract this paper investigates the interaction between energy futures prices and exchange rates results are presented to show that futures prices for crude oil heating oil and unleaded gasoline are co integrated with a trade weighted index of exchange rates this is important because it means that there exists a long run equilibrium relationship between these four variables granger causality results for both the long and short run are presented evidence is also presented that suggests exchange rates transmit exogenous shocks to energy futures prices

population increase and the end of colonialism between 1946 and 1976 the european powers granted independence to all of their large colonies in africa and southeast asia this paper attempts to provide an economic explanation for this remarkable ending to the era of colonialism the main theoretical innovation is to consider the effect of population increase on the allocation of time by the indigenous population between productive and subversive activities the analysis suggests that the increase in population during the colonial period increased the potential private return to subversive activity until the colonies became a net burden on the metropolitan governments it also suggests that there was less subversive activity in colonies in which the market for indigenous labour was monopsonized because monopsonistic employers internalized the potential negative effect of subversive activity on net profits

was weber wrong a human capital theory of protestant economic history max weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of protestant regions to a protestant work ethic we provide an alternative theory protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity we test the theory using county level data from late nineteenth century prussia exploiting the initial concentric dispersion of the reformation to use distance to wittenberg as an instrument for protestantism we find that protestantism indeed led to higher economic prosperity but also to better education our results are consistent with protestants higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity

which countries have state religions among 188 countries 72 had no state religion in 2000 1970 and 1900 58 had a state religion throughout and 58 had 1 or 2 transitions we use a hotelling spatial competition model to analyze the likelihood that the religion market would be monopolized similar forces influence a government s decision to establish a state religion consistent with the model the probability of state religion in 1970 and 2000 is increasing with the adherence rate to the main religion has a nonlinear relation with population and has little relation with per capita gdp the probability of state religion decreases sharply under communism but lagged communism has only a weak effect with costly adjustment for institutions the probability of state religion in 1970 or 2000 depends substantially on the status in 1900 this persistence is much stronger for countries with no major regime change than for countries with such a change

mothers and sons preference formation and female labor force dynamics this paper argues that the growing presence of a new type of man one brought up in a family in which the mother worked has been a significant factor in the increase in female labor force participation over time we present cross sectional evidence showing that the wives of men whose mothers worked are themselves significantly more likely to work we use variation in the importance of world war ii as a shock to women s labor force participation as proxied by variation in the male draft rate across u s states to provide evidence in support of the intergenerational consequences of our propagation mechanism

diffusing knowledge while spreading god s message protestantism and economic prosperity in china 1840 1920 we provide an account of how protestantism promoted economic prosperity in china a country in which protestant missionaries penetrated far and wide during 1840 1920 but only a tiny fraction of the population had converted to christianity by exploiting the spatial variation in the missionaries retreat due to the boxer uprising to identify the diusion of protestantism we

modeling and forecasting the volatility of petroleum futures prices we investigate volatility models and their forecasting abilities for three types of petroleum futures contracts traded on the new york mercantile exchange west texas intermediate crude oil heating oil 2 and unleaded gasoline and suggest some stylized facts about the volatility of these futures markets particularly in regard to volatility persistence or long memory properties in this context we examine the persistence of market returns and volatility simultaneously using the following arfima garch class models arima garch arfima garch arfima igarch and arfima figarch although the arfima figarch model better captures long memory properties of returns and volatility the out of sample analysis indicates no unique model for all three types of petroleum futures contracts suggesting that investors should be careful when measuring and forecasting the volatility risk of petroleum futures markets

revolt on the nile economic shocks religion and political power using centuries of nile flood data i document that during deviant nile floods egypt s highest ranking religious authority was less likely to be replaced and relative allocations to religious structures increased these findings are consistent with historical evidence that nile shocks increased this authority s political influence by raising the probability he could coordinate a revolt i find that the available data provide support for this interpretation and weigh against some of the most plausible alternatives for example i show that while nile shocks increased historical references to social unrest deviant floods did not increase a proxy for popular religiosity together the results suggest an increase in the political power of religious leaders during periods of economic downturn publication abstract

swords or plowshares a theory of the security of claims to property this paper develops a general equilibrium model of the allocation of resources among appropriative and productive activities the model emphasizes the distinction between offensive weapons which are the instruments of predation and fortifications which provide defense against predation the analysis of this model shows how the equilibrium security of claims to property is determined the analysis focuses on the possibility of a nonaggressive equilibrium in which no resources are allocated to offensive weapons and claims to property are fully secure we also analyze the complex relation between economic welfare and the security of claims to property we find for example that a relatively poor agent could be better off in an equilibrium with less secure claims to property

from farmers to merchants conversions and diaspora human capital and jewish history from the end of the second century ce judaism enforced a religious norm requiring fathers to educate their sons we present evidence supporting our thesis that this change had a major influence on jewish economic and demographic history first the high individual and community cost of educating children in subsistence farming economies 2nd to 7th centuries prompted voluntary conversions of jews that account for a share of the reduction from 4 5 to 1 2 million second the jewish farmers who invested in education gained the comparative advantage and incentive to enter skilled occupations during the urbanization in the abbasid empire in the near east 8th and 9th centuries and they did select themselves into these occupations third as merchants the jews invested even more in education a precondition for the mailing network and common court system that endowed them with trading skills demanded all over the world fourth the jews generated a voluntary diaspora within the muslim empire and later to western europe fifth the majority of world jewry lived in the near east when the mongol invasions in the 1250s brought this region back to a subsistence farming economy in which many jews found it difficult to enforce the religious norm and hence converted as it had happened centuries earlier jel j1 j2 n3 o1 z12 z13

persistence in variance structural change and the garch model this article examines the persistence of the variance as measured by the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch model in stock return data in particular we investigate the extent to which persistence in variance may be overstated because of the existence of and failure to take account of deterministic structural shifts in the model both an analysis of daily stock return data and a monte carlo simulation experiment confirm the hypothesis that garch measures of persistence in variance are sensitive to this type of model misspecification

the effects of social security reforms on retirement ages and retirement incomes abstract recent changes legislated in the u s social security system have altered the economic incentives to work and retire some older workers will respond to these new incentives by retiring at different ages this paper evaluates the signs and magnitudes of these responses four specific changes in the structure of social security benefits are examined raising the normal retirement age delaying the cost of living adjustment lowering early retirement benefits and increasing late retirement payments behavioral parameters are estimated using an ordered logit model of retirement ages these are used to predict how retirement behavior might respond to each of the four reforms predicted changes in retirement ages will be too small to compensate retirees for reductions in benefit formulas thus the social security s financial burden will be eased but retirees incomes will fall on average

renewable energy regulation and structural breaks an empirical analysis of spanish electricity price volatility abstract international experience proves that electricity prices have undergone major changes in volatility since the entry of green technologies the intermittency of renewable sources is one of the reasons for these changes as it leads to higher volatility in periods of higher participation by renewables we argue that the development of the regulatory system promoting renewable electricity also plays a crucial role we raise a question that deserves attention could an incentive scheme induce higher share of renewables and lower volatility simultaneously in this paper we conduct an empirical analysis with spanish data we analyze possible ensuing structural changes in spanish electricity spot price volatility from january 2002 to december 2017 we identify two structural breaks linked to important measures related to renewable electricity i the abolishment of the feed in tariff scheme and ii the establishment of a more market oriented regulation based on investment and operating costs we conclude that stable regulatory policies reduce volatility even though the presence of renewable sources is greater furthermore market based policy measures achieve lower volatility encouraging good integration of intermittent renewable electricity

modeling asymmetric comovements of asset returns existing time varying covariance models usually impose strong restrictions on how past shocks affect the forecasted covariance matrix in this article we compare the restrictions imposed by the four most popular multivariate garch models and introduce a set of robust conditional moment tests to detect misspecification we demonstrate that the choice of a multivariate volatility model can lead to substantially different conclusions in any application that involves forecasting dynamic covariance matrices like estimating the optimal hedge ratio or deriving the risk minimizing portfolio we therefore introduce a general model which nests these four models and their natural asymmetric extensions the new model is applied to study the dynamic relation between large and small firm returns article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies