minimum effort coordination games stochastic potential and logit equilibrium abstract this paper revisits the minimum effort coordination game with a continuum of pareto ranked nash equilibria noise is introduced via a logit probabilistic choice function the resulting logit equilibrium distribution of decisions is unique and maximizes a stochastic potential function in the limit as the noise vanishes the distribution converges to an outcome that is analogous to the risk dominant outcome for 2 2 games in accordance with experimental evidence logit equilibrium efforts decrease with increases in effort costs and the number of players even though these parameters do not affect the nash equilibria journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 c92

can oil prices forecast exchange rates an empirical analysis of the relationship between commodity prices and exchange rates we show the existence of a very short term relationship at the daily frequency between changes in the price of a country s major commodity export and changes in its nominal exchange rate the relationship appears to be robust and to hold when we use contemporaneous realized commodity price changes in our regression however when we use lagged commodity price changes the predictive ability is ephemeral mostly appearing after instabilities have been appropriately taken into account

on the robustness of robustness checks of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis since its first inception in the debate on the relationship between environment and growth in 1992 the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis ekc hereafter has been subject of continuous and intense scrutiny the most recent line of investigation criticizes the ekc hypothesis on more fundamental grounds in that it stresses the lack of sufficient statistical testing of the empirical relationship and questions the very existence of the notion of ekc attention is in particular drawn on the stationarity properties of the series involved per capita emissions or concentrations and per capita gdp and in case of presence of unit roots on the cointegration property that must be present for the ekc to be a well defined concept only at that point can the researcher ask whether the long run relationship exhibits an inverted u pattern on the basis of panel integration and cointegration tests for sulfur stern 2004 and perman and stern 1999 2003 have presented evidence and forcefully stated that the ekc hypothesis does not exist in this paper we ask whether similar strong conclusions can be arrived at when carrying out tests of system fractional integration and cointegration as an example we use the controversial case of carbon dioxide emissions the results show that more ekcs come back into life relative to traditional integration cointegration tests however we confirm that the ekc hypothesis remains a fragile concept

the long run relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation the fisher equation revisited stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0022 2879 28199602 2928 3a1 3c102 3atlrbni 3e2 0 co 3b2 2journal of money credit and banking is currently published by ohio state university press your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals ohio press html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgmon aug 27 13 58 08 2007

short run forecasting of the euro dollar exchange rate with economic fundamentals abstract we propose a fundamentals based econometric model for the weekly changes in the euro dollar rate with the distinctive feature of mixing economic variables quoted at different frequencies the model obtains good in sample fit and more importantly encouraging out of sample forecasting results at horizons ranging from one week to one month specifically we obtain statistically significant improvements upon the hard to beat random walk model using traditional statistical measures of forecasting error at all horizons moreover our model obtains a great improvement when we use the direction of change metric which has more economic relevance than other loss measures with this measure our model performs much better at all forecasting horizons than a naive model that predicts the exchange rate as an equal chance to go up or down with statistically significant improvements

how not to extend models of inequality aversion abstract several authors have made attempts to improve the explanatory power of models of inequality aversion in particular the one by fehr and schmidt 1999 by adding concerns for total surplus or efficiency in this note i point out that these attempts are misguided because they are equivalent to a much simpler change not requiring an additional parameter unless we simultaneously consider games with different numbers of players in the latter case however such an approach yields implausible predictions

non linear hybrid exchange rate modeling and trading profitability in the foreign exchange market abstract a neuro fuzzy decision making technology is designed and implemented to obtain the optimal daily currency trading rule it is found that a non linear artificial neural network exchange rate microstructure hybrid model combined with a fuzzy logic controller generates a set of trading strategies that earn a higher rate of return compared to the simple buy and hold strategy after accounting for realistic transaction costs the gains from utilizing a dynamic neuro fuzzy model are still present

the microstructure of the canada u s dollar exchange rate a robustness test abstract the recent international economics literature suggests that market microstructure effects matter for exchange rate determination and forecasting this paper investigates performance robustness of the pure microstructure canada u s dollar exchange rate model it is found that when used for forecasting this microstructure model is very sensitive to the choice of time period and forecasting horizon

toward a unified theory of the csp cfp link this article proposes a unified theory of the relationship between corporate social performance csp and corporate financial performance cfp the theory provides a framework for rationalizing the various and contradictory findings in past empirical research the theory is based on the parallels between the business and csr domains and thus draws on models from economics

survival of overconfidence in currency markets this paper tests the influential hypothesis that irrational traders will be driven out of financial markets by trading losses the paper s main finding is that overconfident currency dealers are not driven out of the market dealers with extensive experience are neither more nor less overconfident than their junior colleagues we set the stage for this investigation by providing evidence that currency dealers display two forms of overconfidence they underestimate uncertainty and they overestimate their professional success this is notable because one might have expected the opposite currency dealers face strong incentives for accuracy they have access to comprehensive information and they have extensive experience

measuring inflation expectations a survey data approach expectations of inflation can be important determinants of actual inflation because they influence the process of wage bargaining price setting speculative buying and financial investing decisions englander and stone 1989 a central bank given its primary objective of price stability therefore takes a natural interest in inflationary expectations of economic agents in fact as illustrated by the theoretical work of e g kydland and prescott 1977 and barro and gordon 1983 inflationary expectations of the public are an important factor determining the success of the central bank in achieving its policy goal measures of inflation expectations can be used for monetary policy purposes for example as information variables in the sense defiined by friedman 1993 or as intermediate targets in the so called direct inflation targeting strategy svensson 1996 fuhrer 1997

identification and estimation of money demand in most natural sciences physics chemistry biology theories are validated by controlled experiment however in other natural sciences astronomy meteorology and in most social sciences including economics the data are characteristically generated not by experiment but by measurement of uncontrolled systems in economics theories take the form of restrictions on the models assumed to generate the data and statistical methods replace experimental controls in testing these restrictions and here is the difficulty in economics particularly macroeconomics the theory used to derive tests ordinarily does not generate a complete specification of which variables are to be held constant when statistical tests are performed on the relation between the dependent variable and the independent variables of primary interest accordingly in such cases there will be a set of often very different candidate regression based tests each of which has equal status with the others since each is based on a different projection of the same underlying multivariate model except in the unlikely event that the explanatory variables are mutually orthogonal the conditional regression coefficients which generally form the basis for the test statistic will depend on the conditioning set we conclude from this that if a theory which does not generate a complete specification of the regression test is nonetheless to have testable implications these implications must be robust over the permissible alternative specifications if the restrictions indicated by the theory are satisfied in some projections but not in others that have an equal claim to represent implications of the theory one cannot conclude that the theory has been confirmed the fact that the observable implications of valid theories must obtain over a broad but usually incompletely specified set of regressions rather than for a single regression introduces a large and unavoidable element of imprecision into hypothesis testing in macroeconomics generally it appears to be appropriate to weaken the statistical criterion for rejecting theories consider for example the theory of money demand which will engage our attention in this paper the tobin baumol square root formula implies that the elasticity of money demand with respect to the interest rate is exactly one half but which interest rate should wealth be held constant inflation in view of such uncertainties it would be inappropriate to insist in a literal minded fashion on rejecting the tobin baumol model if in some regression the measured interest elasticity differed from one half by more than two standard deviations and only then obviously a more flexible approach is called for the practice has been to conclude that the statistical evidence is consistent with the tobin baumol model as long as the interest rate coefficient is negative if it is negative and significant or negative and insignificantly different from minus one half that would provide somewhat stronger confirmation but a positive coefficient particularly a significantly positive coefficient would be viewed as raising questions about the validity of the theory in macroeconomics generally as in the money demand application the typical response to specification uncertainty has been to regard a theory as supported if the signs of the estimated coefficients agree with those expected from theory and as disconfirmed otherwise there is no theoretical justification for this procedure but it seems to be a reasonable course to follow the point that economic theory ordinarily generates incompletely specified statistical university of california santa barbara we have received helpful comments from andrew abel robert clower michael darby robert engle stephen goldfeld david laidler edward leamer robert lucas frederic mishkin and edward prescott thomas hall provided able research assistance

the econometrics of the environmental kuznets curve an illustration using australian co2 emissions four econometric issues associated with the estimation and testing of the environmental kuznets curve ekc are considered i model specification with respect to the order of the polynomial ii

frequency domain analysis of foreign exchange order flows abstract using a unique data set from the bank of canada this paper presents the frequency domain analysis of a causal relationship between the canada us dollar exchange rate movements and currency order flows the evidence shows that the existence as well as the direction of causality depends on the customer type frequency and time period

exchange rate uncertainty and international portfolio flows a multivariate garch in mean approach abstract this paper examines the impact of exchange rate uncertainty on different components of net portfolio flows namely net equity and net bond flows as well as their dynamic linkages specifically a bivariate var garch bekk in mean model is estimated using bilateral monthly data for the us vis a vis australia canada the euro area japan sweden and the uk over the period 1988 01 2011 12 the results indicate that the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on net equity flows is negative in the euro area the uk and sweden and positive in australia the impact on net bond flows is also negative in all countries except canada where it is positive under the assumption of risk aversion the findings suggest that exchange rate uncertainty induces a home bias and causes investors to reduce their financial activities to maximise returns and minimise exposure to uncertainty this effect being stronger in the uk the euro area and sweden compared to canada australia and japan overall the results indicate that exchange rate or credit controls on these flows can be used as a policy tool in countries with strong uncertainty effects to pursue economic and financial stability

models of currency crises with self fulfilling features the discomfort a government suffers from speculation against its currency determines the strategic incentives of speculators and the scope for multiple currency market equilibria after describing an illustrative model in which high unemployment may cause an exchange rate crisis with self fulfilling features the paper reviews some other self reinforcing mechanisms recent econometric evidence seems consistent with the practical importance of these mechanisms

interest rates and currency prices in a two country world abstract this paper is a theoretical study of the determination of prices interest rates and currency exchange rates set in an infinitely lived two country world which is subject both to stochastic endowment shocks and to monetary instability formulas are obtained for pricing all equity claims nominally denominated bonds and currencies and these formulas are related to earlier closely related results in the theories of money finance international trade

a decade s debate on the nexus between corporate social and corporate financial performance a critical review of empirical studies 2002 2011 abstract theoretical discussions and empirical studies on the nexus between corporate social responsibility corporate social performance and corporate financial performance have never ceased since the origin of the concepts the development trajectories of such studies should be articulated with a view to informing practical corporate social responsibility applications and theoretical studies in the future this paper presents a critical review of relevant empirical research articles on the nexus between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance published during the ten year period from 2002 to 2011 using mixed methods of content analyses and statistical analyses the paper reviews 84 empirical studies of this kind published during the period the results indicate that despite the enormous amount of previous studies the corporate social performance and corporate financial performance nexus is a line of inquiry that remains inconclusive the pattern of corporate social performance corporate financial performance relationship research in the decade examined has shifted towards exploring the linkages between specific aspects of the two constructs the positive relationships between these specific aspects in dual directions are confirmed by most of the studies examined in this paper the paper also examines the impact of time and space change on the corporate social performance corporate financial performance nexus the findings show that researchers have gradually recognized that the relationship is not static but changes over time furthermore the paper finds that corporate social responsibility has been increasingly debated in developing countries and in specified industrial settings the review concludes that to explore the corporate social performance corporate financial performance nexus by contextualizing it in a specified community and or examine its dynamics is a promising research area that can yield significant academic and practical values

does payoff equity facilitate coordination a test of schelling s conjecture abstract starting from schelling 1960 several game theorists have conjectured that payoff equity might facilitate coordination in normal form games with multiple equilibria the more equitable equilibrium might be selected either because fairness makes it focal or because many individuals dislike payoff inequities as abundant experimental evidence suggests in this line we propose a selection principle called equity eq which selects the equilibrium in pure strategies minimizing the difference between the highest and smallest money payoff if only one such equilibrium exists using a within subjects experimental design furthermore we study the relative performance of eq in twelve simple 2 2 coordination games in many of these games we find that eq explains individual behavior better than a large range of alternative theories including theories of bounded rationality and several other equilibrium selection principles yet we also observe that the frequency of eq play depends on the payoff structure of the game for instance eq play diminishes when the alternative equilibrium is socially efficient and not very unfair compared with the eq equilibrium our data suggests that equilibrium selection is affected by several factors and that subjects are heterogeneous in this respect but also that equity is often a crucial factor to understand coordination

can the markov switching model forecast exchange rates abstract a markov swirching model is fit for 18 exchange rates at quarterly frequencies the model fits well in sample for many exchange rates by the mean squared error criterion the markov model does not generate superior forecasts to a random walk or the forward rate there appears to ne some evidence that the forecasts of the markov model are superior at predicting the direction of change of the exchange rate

can information heterogeneity explain the exchange rate determination puzzle empirical evidence shows that most exchange rate volatility at short to medium horizons is related to order flow and not to macroeconomic variables we introduce symmetric information dispersion about future macroeconomic fundamentals in a dynamic rational expectations model in order to explain these stylized facts consistent with the evidence the model implies that a observed fundamentals account for little of exchange rate volatility in the short to medium run b over long horizons the exchange rate is closely related to observed fundamentals c exchange rate changes are a weak predictor of future fundamentals and d the exchange rate is closely related to order flow

the curvilinear relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance evidence from the international construction industry abstract the intellectual debate concerning the nexus between corporate social performance csp and corporate financial performance cfp is incessant in recent years the debate has explored more dynamic links one of which is the curvilinear relationship between the two constructs it argues that the relationship between csp and cfp can be better captured by a u shape at a low level of csp companies are not able to cultivate social activities to achieve tangible financial benefits but after passing an inflection point csp will gradually turn into financial benefits that can offset the costs involved this research empirically tests the curvilinear relationship between csp and cfp in the context of the international construction industry using a panel data set of 30 international construction companies and 210 firm year observations over the sample period from 2007 to 2013 the curvilinear relationship of csp on return on assets and earnings per share as specific cfp measures is strongly supported this empirical finding demonstrates an opportunity for executives of international construction companies to capitalize on their social responsibility efforts and create a win win situation between csp and cfp

the effects of oil price shocks on the iranian economy abstract the iranian economy is highly vulnerable to oil price fluctuations this paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between oil price shocks and major macroeconomic variables in iran by applying a var approach the study points out the asymmetric effects of oil price shocks for instance positive as well as negative oil price shocks significantly increase inflation we find a strong positive relationship between positive oil price changes and industrial output growth unexpectedly we can only identify a marginal impact of oil price fluctuations on real government expenditures furthermore we observe the dutch disease syndrome through significant real effective exchange rate appreciation

commercially available order flow data and exchange rate movements caveat emptor research suggests that customer order flow should help predict exchange rates we make two contributions first we provide a review of the recent literature on order flow and exchange rate movements second we critically evaluate the practical value of customer order flow data that are commercially available to the wider market as well as the forecasting properties of inter dealer order flow in line with microstructure theory we find little evidence that the latter can forecast exchange rates but our results also cast considerable doubt on the practical value to market practitioners of commercially available customer order flow data

long memory in foreign exchange rates using the geweke porter hudak test we find evidence of long memory in exchange rate data this implies that the empirical evidence of unit roots in exchange rates may not be robust to long memory alternatives fractionally integrated autoregressive moving average arfima models are estimated by both the time domain exact maximum likelihood ml method and the frequency domain approximate ml method impulse response functions and forecasts based on these estimated arfima models are evaluated to gain insight into the long memory characteristics of exchange rates some tentative explanations of the long memory found in the exchange rates are discussed

are our feers justified the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate feer method of calculating an equilibrium real exchange rate is the most widely used alternative to ppp this paper presents the first comprehensive historical test of feer calculations for six major economies using estimates for the last 20 years we focus on unit root and cointegration techniques both at the individual country level and jointly using panel based estimation specifically we test whether real exchange rates cointegrate with time series for the feer even at an individual country level the results provide support for the feer particularly in canada the uk and germany panel unit root tests suggest that the real exchange rate and feer cointegrate overall the results suggest that the feer approach represents an improvement over ppp in explaining medium to long term trends in the real exchange rates of the major industrialised countries

currency fluctuations in the post bretton woods era the international monetary landscape that has emerged since the felling of bretton woods is characterized by a hybrid exchange rate system that lies somewhere between the textbook polar cases of a gold standard and a pure float this system has relatively flexible exchange rates between major countries active central bank intervention in the market for the major currencies and predominantly fixed exchange rates relative to the dollar or to some basket of currencies for less developed countries and newly industrializing nations the majority of research on currency markets since the early 1970s has focused on the characteristics of flexible exchange rates under this hybrid regime my thesis is that this research has been unsuccessful the proportion of monthly or quarterly exchange rate changes that current models can explain is essentially zero even after the fact forecasts that use actual values instead of forecasted values of the explanatory variables cannot explain major currency movements over the post bretton woods era this result is quite surprising since exchange rate changes would be entirely unpredictable only in very special cases of the theoretical models discussed as the discussion below will argue it is not a general implication of market efficiency that exchange rates follow a random walk process 1

the failure of the monetary model of exchange rate determination in this paper we test three popular versions of the monetary model flexible price forward looking and real interest differential models for the oecd member countries by applying johansen cointegration technique based on country by country analysis we conclude that monetary models do not provide the expected results we reveal several shortcomings of the models and examine the building blocks of the fundamental version although researchers always blame the deviations from purchasing power parity as the reason for the failure of the monetary model our analysis indicates that invalidity of keynesian money demand function is also responsible for unfavourable results

integration cointegration and the forecast consistency of structural exchange rate models abstract we propose an alternative set of criteria for evaluating forecast rationality the forecast and the actual series 1 have the same order of integration 2 are cointegrated and 3 have a cointegrating vector consistent with long run unitary elasticity of expectations we denote forecasts that meet these criteria as consistent forecasts generated from monetary models generally pass 1 however using the johansen procedure cointegration fails to hold the longer the horizon of the cointegrated pairs 3 is not generally rejected using the horvath watson procedure imposing the unitary coefficient restriction we find fewer instances of consistency although a higher proportion of the cases of consistency are found at the longer horizons

intraday patterns in fx returns and order flow using a comprehensive high frequency foreign exchange dataset we present evidence of time of day effects in foreign exchange returns through a significant tendency for currencies to depreciate during local trading hours we confirm this pattern across a range of currencies and time zones we also find that this pattern is reflected in order flow and suggest that both patterns relate to the tendency of market participants to be net purchasers of foreign exchange in their own trading hours data from a single market maker appears to corroborate that interpretation

accounting for endogeneity and the dynamics of corporate social corporate financial performance relationship abstract this paper examines the endogeneity problem in studies dealing with corporate social performance and financial performance relationship since randomized controlled experiments in the business research field are often unfeasible researchers rely mostly on observational data to make claims about doing good doing well arguments in response to several strong calls for additional well crafted empirical research that address endogeneity we revisit the csp cfp relationship in the airline industry to understand how endogeneity arises and how to control for it in studies based on observational panel data we exploit various approaches such as ols fixed effects fixed effects iv 2sls dynamic system gmm and gls estimators we show the appropriateness behind the use of the dynamic system gmm estimator and its benefits over the fixed effects estimator in addition we demonstrate that results in models that do not account for endogeneity lead to inflated estimations misleading interpretations and wrong theoretical propositions about the dynamic nature of csp cfp relationship

the robustness of equilibria to incomplete information a number of papers have shown that a strict nash equilibrium action profile of a game may never be played if there is a small amount of incomplete information see for example carlsson and van damme 1993a we present a general approach to analyzing the robustness of equilibria to a small amount of incomplete information a nash equilibrium of a complete information game is said to be robust to incomplete information if every incomplete information game with payoffs almost always given by the complete information game has an equilibrium which generates behavior close to the nash equilibrium we show that many games with strict equilibria have no robust equilibrium and examine why we get such different results from existing refinements if a game has a unique correlated equilibrium it is robust a natural many player many action generalization of risk dominance is a sufficient condition for robustness

the demand for m1 in the u s a 1960 1988 estimated u s m1 demand functions appear unstable regularly breaking down over 1960 1988 e g missing money great velocity decline m1 explosion we propose a money demand function whose arguments include inflation real income long term bond yield and risk t bill interest rates and learning curve weighted yields on newly introduced instruments in m1 and non transactions m2 the model is estimated in dynamic error correction form it is constant and with an equation standard error of 0 4 variance dominates most previous models estimating alternative specifications explains earlier breakdowns showing the model s distinctive features to be important in accounting for the data

do euro exchange rates follow a martingale some out of sample evidence abstract traditional autocorrelation and variance ratio tests are based on serial uncorrelatedness rather than martingale difference as such they do not capture potential nonlinearity in mean which could lead to misleading inferences in favor of the martingale hypothesis this paper employs various parametric and nonparametric nonlinear models as well as several model comparison criteria to examine the potential martingale behavior of euro exchange rates in the context of out of sample forecasts the overall evidence indicates that while martingale behavior cannot be rejected for euro exchange rates with major currencies such as the japanese yen british pound and us dollar there is nonlinear predictability in terms of economic criteria with respect to several smaller currencies

informational integration and fx trading abstract this paper addresses international financial integration in a new way we focus on informational integration specifically the importance of information conveyed by order flow in major currencies for pricing minor currencies we develop a multi currency model of portfolio allocation in the presence of dispersed information we then test the model s implications using four months of concurrent transaction data on nine currencies the model explains 45 to 78 of daily returns in all nine currencies moreover its prediction that order flow in individual markets should be relevant for determining prices in other markets is borne out

virtuous nexus between corporate social performance and financial performance a study of construction enterprises in china abstract although business and society are thought in a vicious relationship for diminishing trust among stakeholders a few studies indicate the existence of a reciprocal nexus between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance known as the virtuous cycle despite of some empirical studies in developed countries little research has been conducted concerning the assumption in emerging markets where large companies have more responsibilities to create positive and sustainable shared values this paper aims to explore the nexus between social performance and financial performance of chinese companies for their global influential social and environmental impacts together with increasing awareness of corporate social responsibility csr a two step longitudinal design including cross lagged correlation analyses and longitudinal path analyses is applied to examine the overall and decomposed links it is found the virtuous cycle does exist in the overall and in most decomposed links within the context of large construction companies in china these findings are beneficial for interested policy makers corporate managers and the public to create shared value on csr and therefore contribute to csr improvements analysis results indicate a one year time lag to be appropriate for examining the lead lag relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance the research also inspires a potential generalisation of the virtuous cycle by similarly examining it in other industries or other countries with diverse csr contexts

on the consistency of short run and long run exchange rate expectations abstract this paper examines whether short term exchange rate expectations overreact by comparing them with long term expectations we develop a set of nonlinear restrictions linking expectations at different forecast horizons the restrictions impose consistency a property weaker than rationality we use exchange rate survey data to measure expectations and then test whether consistency holds the data show that a current positive exchange rate shock leads investors to expect a higher long run future spot rate when iterating forward their short term expectations than when thinking directly about the long run in this sense short horizon expectations may overreact to current exchange rate changes

long run income and interest elasticities of money demand in the united states econometric techniques designed to accommodate nonstationary data are used to reexamine the stability of interest and income elasticities of money demand in the united states estimates based on postwar monthly data reveal a stable relationship between m1 velocity and various measures of interest rates that proxy the opportunity cost of holding money balances tests for the existence of cointegration and methods used to estimate the income and interest elasticities are based on procedures prescribed by soren johansen 1988 corresponding error correction estimates offer insight as to the dynamics of the process that maintains the equilibrium relation between velocity and interest rates copyright 1991 by mit press

why is it so difficult to outperform the random walk in exchange rate forecasting a simulation exercise is used to demonstrate the difficulty to outperform the random walk in exchange rate forecasting if forecasting accuracy is judged by the root mean square error rmse or similar criteria that depend on the magnitude of the forecasting error it is shown that as the exchange rate volatility rises the rmse of the model rises faster than that of the random walk while the literature considers this finding to be a puzzle that casts a big shadow of doubt on the soundness of international monetary economics the results show that failure to outperform the random walk in both in sample and out of sample forecasting should be the rule rather than the exception however the results do not imply that the random walk is unbeatable because it can be easily outperformed if forecasting accuracy is judged according to criteria such as direction accuracy and profitability

testing beliefs about social preferences evidence from an experimental coordination game we report experimental results on a simple coordination game in which two players can coordinate either on an equal distribution of payoffs or on a pareto superior but unequal distribution of payoffs we find that the higher the difference in individual payoffs the less likely is a successful coordination on the pareto superior distribution while this is well in line with the recent models of inequity aversion our results are best explained not by a preference for equality per se but rather by the belief that the opponent has such a preference

impacts of corporate code of conduct on labor standards a case study of reebok s athletic footwear supplier factory in china this study examines the social impacts of labor related corporate social responsibility csr policies or corporate codes of conduct on upholding labor standards through a case study of csr discourses and codes implementation of reebok a leading branded company enjoying a high profiled image for its human rights achievement in a large taiwanese invested athletic footwear factory located in south china i find although implementation of reebok labor related codes has resulted in a race to ethical and legal minimum labor standards when notoriously inhumane and seriously illegal labor rights abuses were curbed chinese workers were forced to work harder and faster but earned less payment and the employee elected trade union installed through codes implementation operated more like a company union rather than an autonomous workers organization representing worker interests in order to explain the paradoxical effects of reebok labor related codes on labor standards i argue the result is determined by both structural forces and agency related factors embedded in industrial national and local contexts to put it shortly i find the effectiveness of reebok labor related codes is constrained not only by unsolved tension between reebok s impetus for profit maximization and commitment to workers human rights but also by hard nosed competition realities at marketplace and chinese government s insufficient protection of labor rights despite drawing merely from a single case study these findings illuminate key determinants inhibiting the effectiveness of labor related csr policies or codes in upholding labor standards and hence two possible way outs of the deadlock 1 sharing cost for improving labor standards among key players in global supply chain and 2 combining regulatory power of voluntary codes and compulsory state legislations

accounting for exchange rate variability in present value models when the discount factor is near 1 a well known stylized fact about nominal exchange rates among low inflation advanced countries particularly u s exchange rates is that their logs are approximately random walks michael i mussa 1979 is most frequently cited for observing this regularity in a famous pair of papers richard a meese and kenneth rogoff 1983a b found that the structural models of the 1970 s could not beat a random walk in explaining exchange rate movements recently some authors menzie chinn and meese 1995 nelson mark 1995 mark and donggyu sul 2001 have argued that the models can outforecast the random walk at long horizons but a comprehensive recent study by yin wong cheung et al 2003 documents that no model consistently outperforms a random walk why one obvious explanation is that the macroeconomic variables that determine the exchange rate themselves follow random walks if the log of the nominal exchange rate is a linear function of forcing variables that are random walks then it will inherit the random walk property the problem with this explanation is that the economic fundamentals proposed in the most popular models of exchange rates do not in fact follow simple random walks one resolution to this problem is that there may be some other fundamentals ones that have been proposed in some models but are not easily measurable or ones that have not yet been proposed at all that are important in determining exchange rates if these unobserved fundamentals follow random walks and dominate the variation in exchange rate changes then exchange rates will nearly be random walks even if the standard observed fundamentals are not in engel and west 2003a hereinafter ew we propose an alternative explanation we consider linear models of the exchange rate that are in the asset market approach to exchange rates these models emphasize the role of expectations of future economic fundamentals in determining the current exchange rate the exchange rate expressed as the home currency price of foreign currency in this paper can be written as a discounted sum of the current and expected future fundamentals

oil price shocks and agricultural commodity prices abstract while the impacts of oil price changes on agricultural commodity markets are of great interest to economists previous studies do not differentiate oil specific shocks from aggregate demand shocks in this paper we address this issue using a structural var analysis our findings indicate that the responses of agricultural commodity prices to oil price changes depend greatly on whether they are caused oil supply shocks aggregate demand shocks or other oil specific shocks mainly driven by precautionary demand oil shocks can explain a minor friction of agricultural commodity price variations before the food crisis in 2006 2008 whereas in post crisis period their explanatory abilities become much higher after crisis the contributions of oil specific factors to variations in agricultural commodity prices are greater than those of aggregate demand shocks the results from an alternative svar confirm the robustness of our main findings

error correction modelling and dynamic specifications as a conduit to outperforming the random walk in exchange rate forecasting the proposition that dynamic exchange rate models can outperform the random walk in out of sample forecasting in the sense that they produce lower mean square errors is examined and disputed by using several dynamic versions of three macroeconomic exchange rate models it is demonstrated that dynamic specifications outperform the corresponding static models but improvement in the forecasting power may not be sufficient for the dynamic models to perform better than the random walk the results are explained by suggesting that any dynamic specification or transformation of the static model leads to the introduction of a lagged dependent variable which in effect is a random walk component the analysis leads to the conclusion that it is implausible to aim at beating the random walk by augmenting a static model with a random walk component

expectation formation in the foreign exchange market a time varying heterogeneity approach using survey data using consensus economics survey data on jpy usd and gbp usd exchange rate expectations for the 3 and 12 month horizons over the period november 1989 december 2012 we first show that expectations fail the conventional tests of unbiasedness and do not exhibit a learning process towards rationality our approach is consistent with the economically rational expectations theory feige and pearce 1976 which states that information costs and agents aversion to misestimating future exchange rates determine the optimal amounts of information on which they base their expectations the time variability of the cost aversion ratios justifies at the aggregate level a representation of expectations as a linear combination of the traditional extrapolative adaptive and regressive processes augmented by a forward market component whose parameters are allowed to change over time this mixed expectation model with unstable heterogeneity is validated by our kalman filter estimation results for the two currencies and

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

order flow and the monetary model of exchange rates evidence from a novel data set we propose an exchange rate model that is a hybrid of the conventional specification with monetary fundamentals and the evans lyons microstructure approach we estimate a model augmented with order flow variables using a unique data set almost 100 monthly observations on interdealer order flow on dollar euro and dollar yen the augmented macroeconomic or hybrid model exhibits greater in sample stability and out of sample forecasting improvement vis a vis the basic macroeconomic and random walk specifications

financial amplification of foreign exchange risk premia abstract theories of financial frictions in international capital markets suggest that financial intermediaries balance sheet constraints amplify fundamental shocks we present empirical evidence for such theories by decomposing the u s dollar risk premium into components associated with macroeconomic fundamentals and a component associated with financial intermediary balance sheets relative to the benchmark model with only macroeconomic state variables balance sheets amplify the u s dollar risk premium we discuss applications to financial stability monitoring

can environmental quality spread through institutions spatial relationships are known phenomena in ecological studies that refer to the relationships between certain variables observed in different localities different mechanisms have been suggested to explain this phenomenon such as the pollution displacement hypothesis foreign direct investment international trade and strategic response of countries to transboundary pollution flows this paper develops a new mechanism in the sense that environmental quality of countries spreads spatially to their neighbors through the spillover of the institutional quality of countries to test this hypothesis a panel data model is constructed that estimates the impact of the institutional quality of countries and their neighbors on their co2 emission intensity of energy use using data for 129 countries over the period 1980 2007 the findings prove the existence of this mechanism at the global and regional levels

payoff inequity reduces the effectiveness of correlated equilibrium recommendations we examine theoretically and experimentally how individuals willingness to follow third party recommendations in 2 2 games is affected by payoff asymmetry we consider six versions of battle of the sexes recommendations imply monetary payoffs that are equal ex ante but unequal ex post so although following recommendations constitutes a nash equilibrium under standard preferences sufficiently inequity averse players can rationally disobey a recommendation that would lead to a very unfavourable payoff distribution as long as the cost of doing so is not too large our theoretical model incorporates inequity aversion along with level k reasoning our main experimental result is consistent with the model as either payoff asymmetry increases or the cost of disobeying an unfavourable recommendation decreases subjects are more likely to disobey recommendations

dirty industries patterns of change in industrial countries this article concerns itself with the environmental role of heavily polluting industries since 1970 analysing its development in 11 basic industries as well as electricity production and road transport in 32 industrial countries it argues for a green industrial policy demonstrating that other mitigations of environmental pressure in industrial countries end of pipe treatment relocation to the third world structural change in the industrial sector and even environmentally oriented modernization have so far been unable to solve the problems of dirty industries although some approaches have shown some promise

why is it so difficult to outperform the random walk an application of the meese rogoff puzzle to stock prices some economists suggest that the meese rogoff puzzle is equally applicable to the stock market in the sense that no model of stock prices can outperform the random walk in out of sample forecasting we argue that this is not a puzzle and that we should expect nothing but this result if forecasting accuracy is measured by the root mean square error rmse and similar metrics that take into account the magnitude of the forecasting error only we demonstrate by using two models for dividend paying and nondividend paying stocks that as price volatility rises the rmse of the random walk rises but the rmse of the model rises even more rapidly making it unlikely for the model to outperform the random walk

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

the impact of international remittances on child outcomes and household expenditures in nepal abstractnepal has one of the highest ratios of international remittances to gross domestic product in the world we examine whether the massive inflow of international remittances affects child schooling child labour and household expenses controlling extensively for a host of observed characteristics of households and migrants and using an instrumental variable approach this research finds no effect of international remittances on child education or child labour in nepal however it does find a significant increase in non food expenditures including education spending due to international remittances despite increased expenditure on child education educational outcomes are not improving because of international remittances

energy consumption employment output and temporal causality evidence from taiwan based on cointegration and error correction modelling techniques in this study a cointegration analysis and a vector autoregressive model var are used to examine the causal relationships among energy consumption employment and output for taiwan over the period january 1982 to november 1997 johansen 1988 and johansen and juselius 1990 cointegration test result indicates these three variables are cointegrated with one cointegrating vector the results from granger causality tests based on vector error correction models vecm suggest bidirectional grange causality for employment output and employment energy consumption but only unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to output furthermore the impulse responses and variance decompositions are also incorporated into the analysis the results from impulsive response and variance decomposition analysis tell similar stories energy consumption appears to have led to output growth in taiwan over this period the policy implication of this finding is that energy conservation will restrain the outpu

rationality of survey data and tests for market efficiency in the foreign exchange markets abstract this paper tests the rational expectations hypothesis reh and the market efficiency hypothesis meh in the foreign exchange markets using survey data on expectations our results show that the spot exchange rates expected exchange rates and the forward rates all follow a random walk process hence the cointegration theory is employed to test the reh and meh all the test statistics support the reh but fail to support the meh we use survey data on expectations to identify the causes behind this failure of the meh jel f31 g14

inequality in minimum effort coordination abstract successful coordination is key for economic and societal wealth the rich literature on the minimum effort game meg has provided valuable insights into coordination both theoretically and empirically yet although real world scenarios often involve asymmetric benefits and or costs from coordination most previous studies rely on symmetric megs we investigate the effect of unequal equilibrium payoffs in the meg in two experiments we observe that players are better able to coordinate on an equal rather than an unequal pareto dominant equilibrium we find that the ability to coordinate on the unequal pareto dominant equilibrium critically hinges on the costs of miscoordination for the player who benefits most from successful coordination when her costs are low she seems able to stabilize the pareto dominant equilibrium even if payoffs are highly unequal whereas coordination success worsens substantially when her costs are high

an economic evaluation of empirical exchange rate models this paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the short horizon predictive ability of economic fundamentals and forward premiums on monthly exchange rate returns in a framework that allows for volatility timing we implement bayesian methods for estimation and ranking of a set of empirical exchange rate models and construct combined forecasts based on bayesian model averaging more importantly we assess the economic value of the in sample and out of sample forecasting power of the empirical models and find two key results 1 a risk averse investor will pay a high performance fee to switch from a dynamic portfolio strategy based on the random walk model to one that conditions on the forward premium with stochastic volatility innovations and 2 strategies based on combined forecasts yield large economic gains over the random walk benchmark these two results are robust to reasonably high transaction costs

predicting inflation does the quantity theory help i introduction inflation forecasting has played a key role in recent u s monetary policy and this has led to a renewed search for variables that serve as good indicators of future inflation one frequently used indicator based on the phillips curve is the unemployment rate or a similar measure of the output gap as in gerlach and svensson 2003 clark and mccracken 2003 mankiw 2001 and gali and gertler 1999 the phillips curve is believed by many to be the preferred tool for forecasting inflation see e g mankiw 2001 stock and watson 1999a blinder 1997 though as argued by sargent 1999 its use in formulating monetary policy is not without controversy another approach based on the quantity theory of money uses monetary aggregates to predict inflation despite the strong theoretical motivation for this approach though there is little evidence that measures of the nominal money supply are useful for predicting inflation relative to a conventional unemployment rate phillips curve model see stock and watson 1999a for a detailed analysis of the forecast performance of popular inflation indicators stock and watson s results indicate that even simple univariate time series models generally forecast about as well as models that include measures of the money supply so that it is hard to make the case that nominal money supply data have any predictive content for inflation 1 this article evaluates inflation forecasts made by models that allow for prices money and output to be cointegrated and in the process reexamines the question of whether monetary aggregates have marginal predictive content for inflation our work is motivated in part by economic theory as the presence of a cointegrating relationship among the series we look at corresponds to an implicit assumption that prices the money supply and output hang together in the long run an implicit feature of most analyses based on the quantity theory from a statistical point of view a system with cointegrated regressors does not have a finite order vector autoregressive var representation so that a var in differences will be misspecified and may not forecast well regardless of the relevance of the included variables our analysis is therefore focused on the questions are there gains in terms of forecast accuracy from imposing the restriction that prices money and output are cointegrated does it matter whether cointegrating restrictions are imposed a priori based on economic theory or can they be estimated and do models imposing cointegration among prices money and output forecast inflation as well as the phillips curve and other alternative models the econometric framework that we employ is similar to that of stock and watson 1999a but differs from theirs in two ways first stock and watson 1999a consider one year horizon inflation forecasts whereas we consider forecast horizons of up to five years this is potentially important in our context as we include versions of the quantity theory of money in our analysis a theory that arguably may not yield substantive gains to forecasting in the short run additionally future inflation at many horizons is in general of interest to policy makers even if the weight attached to inflation at different horizons is a matter of individual preference so that long run predictions are only unuseful if and when they fail to have marginal predictive content for inflation 2 a second difference between our work and that of stock and watson 1999a is that some of our models differ from theirs including those that impose quantity theory based cointegrating restrictions for example in these types of models we 1 impose a cointegration restriction derived from the assumption of stationary velocity and 2 estimate cointegrating restrictions we also examine a fairly broad variety of linear models including simple autoregressive ar models in levels and differences conventional unemployment rate phillips curve models and var models in levels and differences with money prices and output

long run purchasing power parity during the recent float abstract this paper examines the relevance of long run purchasing power parity ppp which allows for measurement errors during the recent floating exchange rate period previous empirical studies generally fail to find support for long run ppp over this period in this paper in this paper the cointegration property of exchange rates and prices is examined using maximum likelihood procedure and we find significant evidence favorable to long run ppp further tests for symmetry and proportionality indicate that these two conditions are not generally with the data the results support the hypothesis of long run ppp with measurement errors in prices

banking on currency forecasts how predictable is change in money abstract the paper examines the predictive performance of four structural exchange rate models using both parametric and nonparametric techniques error correction versions of the models are fit so that plausible long run elasticities can be imposed on the fundamental variables of each model a variety of model evaluation statistics are reported our findings confirm that fundamental exchange rate models forecast no better than a random walk model for short term prediction horizons for longer horizons error correction terms can explain exchange rate movements significantly better than a no change forecast for a subset of the models and currencies we consider

fixed versus flexible lessons from ems order flow abstract we extend the literature on regime dependent volatility in two ways first our microstructural model provides a qualitatively new explanation second we test implications of our model using europe s recent shift to rigidly fixed rates ems to emu in the model shocks to order flow induce more volatility under flexible rates because the elasticity of speculative demand is endogenously low leading to pronounced portfolio balance effects new data on ff dm transactions show that order flow had persistent effects on the exchange rate before emu parities were announced after announcement the ff dm rate was decoupled from order flow as the model predicts

order flow information and spot rate dynamics abstract this paper examines why order flows are empirically important drivers of spot exchange rate dynamics we consider a decomposition for the depreciation rate that must hold in any model and show that order flows will appear as important proximate drivers when they convey significant incremental information about future interest rate differentials risk premiums and or long run exchange rate levels i e information that cannot be inferred from publicly observed variables we estimate the importance of these incremental information flows for the eurnok spot exchange rate using eight years of high quality disaggregated end user order flow data collected by the norges bank

the stability of long run money demand in five industrial countries abstract this study provides strong evidence for the stability of long run demand functions for narrowly defined money m1 in five industrial countries u s japan canada u k and west germany using post war quarterly data evidence of stability is examined using two different estimation techniques and through a formal test of parameter constancy designed specifically for cointegrating vectors in the majority of these countries the key to stability is the imposition of a unitary long run income elasticity that is rarely rejected by the data

cointegration as an explanation for the meese rogoff puzzle abstractsome economists suggest that the failure of exchange rate models to outperform the random walk in exchange rate forecasting out of sample can be attributed to failure to take into account cointegration when it is present we attempt to find out if cointegration matters for forecasting accuracy by examining the relation between the stationarity and size of the forecasting error results based on three macroeconomic models of exchange rates do not provide strong support for the proposition that cointegration matters for forecasting accuracy the simulation results show that while stationary errors tend to be smaller than non stationary errors this is not a universal rule irrespective of the presence or absence of cointegration none of the three models can outperform the random walk in out of sample forecasting which means that cointegration cannot solve the meese rogoff puzzle

forecasting in cointegrated systems we consider the implications for forecast accuracy of imposing unit roots and cointegrating restrictions in linear systems of i 1 variables in levels differences and cointegrated combinations asymptotic formulae are obtained for multi step forecast error variances for each representation alternative measures of forecast accuracy are discussed finite sample behaviour in a bivariate model is studied by monte carlo using control variables we also analyse the interaction between unit roots and cointegrating restrictions and intercepts in the dgp some of the issues are illustrated with an empirical example of forecasting the demand for m1 in the uk

supplier integration green sustainability programs and financial performance of fashion enterprises under global financial crisis abstract fashion business is sensitive to economic situations and supplier integration si and green sustainability programs gsp are two timely issues in the fashion industry undoubtedly both si and gsp require significant resources and continuous commitment which affect cash flows and resource allocation of the fashion enterprises how si and gsp affect the financial performance of the fashion enterprises under the global financial crisis is hence an important issue motivated by the above relationship and based on publicly available data this study aims to explore empirically i the impact of si and gsp adoption on the financial performance of fashion enterprises ii the ability of si and gsp adoption to alleviate adversity owing to financial crisis and iii the moderating effect brought by fashion content on the above relationships the findings reveal that i both si and gsp adoption can significantly improve the financial performance of the fashion enterprises ii both si and gsp adoption help to mitigate the adverse effect of financial tsunami on the fashion enterprise s financial performance and iii fashion content has a moderating effect for fashion enterprises which sell fashionable items i e fashionable group to increase profits through a higher level of si or executing gsp to act against financial tsunami managerial implications and insights are discussed

an investigation of customer order flow in the foreign exchange market this paper examines the effect that heterogeneous customer orders flows have on exchange rates by using a new propreitary dataset of weekly net order flow segmented by customer type across nine of the most liquid currency pairs we make three contributions first we investigate the extent to which order flow can help to explain exchange rate movements over and above the influence of macroeconomic variables second we look at the usefulness of order flow in forecasting exchange rate movements at longer horizons than those generally considered in the microstructure literature finally we address the question of whether the out of sample exchange rate forecasts generated by order flows can be employed profitably in the foreign exchange markets

local information in foreign exchange markets abstract this study shows that order flow in a foreign exchange market appears to have permanent price impact only if it comes from certain regions these regions are as predicted by the local information hypothesis centers of political and financial decision making it is revealing that orders from other regions only show a very short lived but no permanent price impact local information is so important that it carries over from the usually considered market orders to aggressively priced limit orders too the finding is robust to common news shocks to the consideration of feedback trading and to further controls

the monetary model of the exchange rate long run relationships short run dynamics and how to beat a random walk abstract the monetary model is re examined for the sterling dollar exchange rate first it is demonstrated using a multivariate cointegration technique that an unrestricted monetary model is a valid framework for analyzing the long run exchange rate second we find once proper account has been taken of the short run data dynamics that an unrestricted monetary model outperforms the random walk and other models in an out of sample forecasting contest jel f31

assessing forecast performance in a cointegrated system this paper examines the forecast performance of a cointegrated system relative to the forecast performance of a comparable var that fails to recognize that the system is characterized by cointegration the cointegrated system we examine is composed of three vectors a money demand representation a fisher equation and a risk premium captured by an interest rate differential the forecasts produced by the vector error correction model vecm associated with this system are compared with those obtained from a corresponding differenced vector autoregression dvar as well as a vector autoregression based upon the levels of the data lvar forecast evaluation is conducted using both the full system criterion proposed by clements and hendry 1993 and by comparing forecast performance for specific variables overall our findings suggest that selective forecast performance improvement especially at long forecast horizons may be observed by incorporating knowledge of cointegration rank our general conclusion is that when the advantage of incorporating cointegration appears it is generally at longer forecast horizons this is consistent with the predictions of engle and yoo 1987 but we also find consistent with clements and hendry 1995 that relative gain in forecast performance clearly depends upon the chosen data transformation

meese rogoff redux micro based exchange rate forecasting meese rogoff redux micro based exchange rate forecasting by martin d d evans and richard k lyons this paper compares the true ex ante fore casting performance of a micro based model against both a standard macro model and a random walk in contrast to existing literature which is focused on longer horizon forecasting we examine forecasting over horizons from one day to one month the one month horizon being where micro and macro analysis begin to over lap over our three year forecasting sample we find that the micro based model consistently outperforms both the random walk and the macro model micro based forecasts account for almost 16 percent of the sample variance in monthly spot rate changes these results pro vide a level of empirical validation as yet unat tained by other models the forecasting experiment proposed by richard meese and kenneth rogoff 1983 re mains a benchmark against which exchange rate models are judged their result that structural macro models cannot outperform a naive random walk has proved robust over the decades yet the meese rogoff paper was never about forecasting in the true sense i e using tirrie f information to forecast exchange rates at t 1 b y using concurrent realized values of the forcing variables their regressions were more about concurrent explanation than about ex ante forecasting their only forecast ing element is in their reliance on ex ante data to estimate equation parameters which appro priately penalized models whose estimated pa rameters were unstable tion for the random walk nature of exchange rates is that there exists some unobserved fun damental that itself follows a random walk un observed being important because fundamentals proposed in most macro models do not follow random walks they offer a different explana tion one rooted in the asset approach to ex change rates and the present value relation that follows from it specifically they show that i f fundamentals are 1 1 but not necessarily ran dom walks then as the discount factor in the present value relation approaches 1 the ex change rate will follow a process arbitrarily close to a random walk intuitively given that an 1 1 process can be split into random walk and stationary components a discount factor near 1 means that most all of the weight is placed on fundamentals far into the future ex pectations of which are dominated by the random walk component charles engel and kenneth west 2004 2005 provide a valuable perspective on the forecastability of exchange rates one explana this paper takes the analysis of engel and west as an important reorientation of thinking and brings it to the natural next step specifi cally if there is little room for forecasting based on stationary components of fundamentals then one needs to focus on where all the action is namely exchange rate dynamics that come from expectational surprises though the sur prise part is by definition orthogonal to public information our micro based model shows that there should exist types of nonpublic infor mation that are useful for forecasting this part and where to look for these types of informa tion we then locate data on these types of nonpublic information and test whether they have true ex ante forecasting power we should evans department of economics georgetown uni versity washington dc 20057 and nber lyons haas school of business university of california berkeley c a 94720 1900 and nber we are grateful to ken west for his comments and to the national science foundation for financial support we refrain from using the word news because it has too strong an association with macro information that is public which even in the most careful of event studies explains less than 5 percent of exchange rate variation in total see torben andersen et al 2003

the relationship between disclosures of corporate social performance and financial performance evidences from gri reports in manufacturing industry whether the corporate social performance affects the financial performance is still unclear in many manufacturing companies we commonly expect on one side that profitable corporations have stronger incentives to reveal information on the social performance in order to improve their publicity on the other hand companies may face the fear of rising costs due to corporate social responsibility csr activities with increasing concerns of csr it is timely to investigate the relationship between the disclosure of corporate social performance and the financial performance in this paper with the above study objective we use global reporting initiative gri reports of 75 sample companies collect evidences by applying the method of structured content analysis of the cases and attempt to identify this relationship the corporate social performance is measured by the indicators according to the gri guidelines i e within the categories of labor practices and decent work human rights society as well as product responsibility financial performance is measured by return on equity sales growth and cash flow sales ratio using statistical evaluation methods our results indicate that the categories of human rights society as well as product responsibility display a significant and positive correlation with the return on equity same conclusion also holds for many csr indicators nevertheless when examining the csr practices across different manufacturing sectors we have not observed significant differences the study results are important for understanding the development and implementation of csr practices in the manufacturing industry

a study of management perceptions of the impact of corporate social responsibility on organisational performance in emerging economies the case of dubai although a number of studies have shown that corporate social responsibility csr activities often lead to greater organisational performance in western developed economies researchers are yet to examine the strategic value of csr in emerging economies using survey data from 280 firms operating in dubai this study examines the link between csr activities and organisational performance the results show that csr has a positive relationship with all three measures of organisational performance financial performance employee commitment and corporate reputation these results reinforce the accumulating body of empirical support for the positive impact of csr on performance and challenge the dominant assumption that given the weak institutional framework in emerging economies csr activities drain resources and compromise firms competitiveness

the corporate social performance financial performance link strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management rather than traditional arenas of strategic management using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance corporate social performance csp is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance supporting the theory that slack resource availability and csp are positively related csp is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance supporting the theory that good management and csp are positively related 1997 by john wiley sons ltd