unraveling the complex interrelationships between exchange rates and fundamentals abstract this research investigates the intrinsic characteristics of currency values by fundamentally decomposing investor expectations on 16 currencies the results on 195 exchange rates over several decades indicate investors perceive countries to be more likely to choose devaluation solutions to bop problems when inflation is lower and when an alternative drop in real income growth is more painful in addition empirical support is provided for the hypothesis that forward rates often appear biased because the distributional expectations incorporated into them include for a country with a current account deficit a small probability of a large spot decline that does not actually occur in most finite samples

asset pricing with observable stochastic discount factors the stochastic discount factor model provides a general framework for pricing assets by specifying the discount factor suitably it encompasses most of the theories currently in use including capm and consumption capm the sdf model has been based on the use of single and multiple factors and on latent and observed factors in most situations and especially for the term structure single factor models are inappropriate whilst latent variables require the somewhat arbitrary specification of generating processes and are difficult to interpret in this paper we survey the principal different implementations of the sdf model for bonds equity and forex and propose a new approach this is based on the use of multiple factors that are observable and modelling the joint distribution of excess returns and the factors using a multi variate garch in mean process we argue that in general single equation and var models although widely used in empirical finance are inappropriate as they do not satisfy the no arbitrage condition since risk premia arise from conditional covariation between the returns and the factors both a multi variate context and having conditional covariances in the conditional mean process is essential we explain how apparent exceptions such as the cir and vasicek models in fact meet this requirement but at a price we explain our new approach discuss how it might be implemented and present some empirical evidence mainly from our own researches partly to enable comparisons to be made the survey also includes evidence from recent empirical work using more traditional approaches

interdependent international relations and the expansion of ethanol production and consumption the brazilian perspective abstract the global production and consumption of ethanol are expected to increase the growing interdependence of markets and nations producers and consumers of biofuels has led actors to seek and devise mechanisms intended to develop the sector this paper aims to analyze the interdependent international relations between brazil and other ethanol biofuel producer and consumer countries to do so the paper explores the theory of complex interdependence and the game theory a quali quantitative study was conducted involving the application of two questionnaires to experts on biofuels and documentary analysis aided by qda miner software the results show that brazil shares highly interdependent relations with the united states an intermediate degree of interdependence with europe and a low degree of interdependence with china the dimensions of those interdependent relations can be ranked according to importance in the following order first the political then the economic technical and finally the social environmental dimensions a number of actions can be envisaged that could lead ethanol to achieve an increasingly strategic position in the diversification of the energy matrix in different countries technological efforts to improve production efficiency the creation of globally integrated policies designed to provide security and develop the production and consumption infrastructure the reduction of international tariffs on the product and the transformation of ethanol into a global commodity with a large number of countries buying and selling the product this paper faced the challenge of integrating approaches and concepts from two complex theoretical areas complex interdependence theory and game theory the research methodology and the insights gained from the ethanol case contribute to the literature on the applicability of these two theoretical approaches

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

explaining bank distress in eastern european transition economies abstract this paper considers the joint role of macroeconomic structural and bank specific factors in explaining the occurrence of banking problems in the nineteen eastern european transition countries over the last decade with data at the individual bank level we show using a discrete time survival model that all three factors interact in their impact and have a rich dynamic profile which underlines the highly volatile cycles challenging the stability of banks in this region a fragile funding basis accompanied by high exposure to market risk in an environment of reforms and macroeconomic disturbances is the typical precursor of bank distress

game theoretic analysis of competitive agri biomass supply chain abstract this research aims to explore the optimal strategies for managing competitive agri biomass supply chain first a game model of a supply chain consisting of one supplier and two buyers is used to develop the optimal strategies for the supplier and buyers as well as the total equilibrium profit then the industrial coexistence conditions are analyzed and the effects of the model parameters on game equilibrium are evaluated finally the methodology is illustrated with a case study in china

monetary convergence of the eu accession countries to the eurozone a theoretical framework and policy implications abstract a flexible approach to direct inflation targeting offers the european union accession countries a viable monetary policy choice that is believed to facilitate both the economic transition and the monetary convergence to the eurozone following this assumption a model investigating the nexus between inflation and selected monetary variables in three eu accession countries the czech republic poland and hungary is advanced the empirical analysis is aimed at explaining the sensitivity of the cpi based inflation path in these countries to backward as well as forward looking expectations nominal exchange rate fluctuations the eurozone inflation impulses and output changes the analysis implies that the monetary convergence begins with flexible inflation targeting and concludes with a full fledged euroization

time varying betas and risk premia in the pricing of forward foreign exchange contracts abstract this paper specifies the single beta capital asset pricing model for the pricing of forward foreign exchange contracts from the point of view of a u s investor parametric specification of the betas as arch like processes explicitly allows for time variation as well as sign variation of the risk premium in the forward foreign exchange market i estimate the model jointly for four currencies using a generalized method of moments procedure the results show significant time variation for the betas and tests of the overidentifying restrictions are generally favorable to the model

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

macroeconomic sources of risk in the term structure we develop a new way of modeling time variation in term premia based on the stochastic discount factor model of asset pricing the joint distribution of excess u s bond returns of different maturity and the observable fundamental macroeconomic factors is modeled using multivariate garch with conditional covariances in the mean to capture the term premia by testing the assumption of no arbitrage we derive a specification test of our model we estimate the contribution made to the term premia at different maturities through real and nominal sources of risk from the estimated term premia we recover the term structure of interest rates and examine how it varies through time finally we examine whether the reported failures of the rational expectations hypothesis can be attributed to an omitted time varying term premium

the implications of first order risk aversion for asset market risk premiums abstract in an effort to explain simultaneously the excess return predictability observed in equity bond and foreign exchange markets we incorporate preferences exhibiting first order risk aversion into a general equilibrium two country monetary model when we calibrate the model to us and japanese data we find that first order risk aversion substantially increases excess return predictability however this increased predictability is insufficient to match the data we conclude that the observed patterns of excess return predictability are unlikely to be explained purely by time varying risk premiums generated by highly risk averse agents in a complete markets economy

macroeconomic sources of foreign exchange risk in new eu members abstract we address the issue of foreign exchange risk and its macroeconomic determinants in several new eu members we derive the observable macroeconomic factors consumption and inflation using the stochastic discount factor sdf approach the joint distribution of excess returns in the foreign exchange market and the factors are modeled using a multivariate garch in mean specification our findings show that both real and nominal factors play important roles in explaining the variability of the foreign exchange risk premium both types of factors should be included in monetary general equilibrium models employed to study excess returns to contribute to the further stability of domestic currencies the new eu members should strive to implement stabilization policies aimed at achieving nominal as well as real convergence with the core eu members

optimal greenhouse gas emissions under various assessments of climate change ambiguity the probabilities associated with global warming damage are likely to be continuously revised in the light of new information such revisions of probability are the defining characteristic of ambiguity as opposed to risk this paper examines how climate change ambiguity may affect optimal greenhouse gas emission strategies via the decision maker s attitude towards anticipated changes of damage probabilities two conceptualizations of ambiguity are distinguished according to the emphasis placed on the ambiguity of priors or on the ambiguity of news respectively it is shown that the way in which ambiguity is viewed and the attitude taken towards it have a substantial influence on the optimal emission trajectory

do asset demand functions optimize over the mean and variance of real returns a six currency test abstract international asset demands are functions of expected returns optimal portfolio theory tells us that the coefficients in this relationship depend on the variance covariance matrix of real returns but previous estimates of the optimal portfolio 1 assume expected returns constant and 2 are not set up to test the hypothesis of mean variance optimization we use maximum likelihood estimation to impose a constraint between the coefficients and the error variance covariance matrix for a portfolio of six currencies we are able statistically to reject the constraint evidently investors are either not sophisticated enough to maximize a function of the mean and variance of end of period wealth or else are too sophisticated to do so

accounting for forward rates in markets for foreign currency absteract forward and spot exchange rates between major currencies imply large standard deviations of both predictable returns from currency speculation and of the equilibrium price measure the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution representative agent theory with time additive preferences cannot account for either of these properties we show that the theory does considerably better along these dimensions when the representative agent s preferences exhibit habit persistence but that the theory fails to reproduce some of the other properties of the data in particular the strong autocorrelation of forward premiums since the advent of flexible exchange rates in the early 1970s a large body of statistical work has established that forward rates for major currencies are not optimal predictors of future spot rates relevant evidence is reported in studies by baillie lippens and mcmahon 1983 bekaert 1991 bilson 1981 boothe and longworth 1984 cumby 1988 cumby and obstfeld 1984 fama 1984 gregory and mccurdy 1984 hansen and hodrick 1983 hodrick and srivastava 1984 and korajczyk and viallet 1990 a more complete list of references is provided by hodrick 1987 these papers indicate that returns from speculation in forward and spot currency markets are predictable and that the predictable components vary considerably over time a number of alternative explanations have been offered for the predictable variation in foreign currency market excess returns kaminsky 1988 korajczyk 1985 and krasker 1980 suggest that infrequent extreme events may make returns appear predictable in small samples the so called peso problem lewis 1989 argues that rational learning following infrequent changes in the process governing equilibrium prices can explain part of the ex post predictability of currency returns froot and frankel 1989 and froot and thaler 1990 examine the hypothesis that market forecasts of future spot

the impact of fx central bank intervention in a noise trading framework abstract in this paper we analyse the effectiveness of the direct central bank interventions using a new effectiveness criterion to this aim we investigate the effects of central bank interventions cbi in a noise trading model with chartists and fundamentalists we first estimate a model in which chartists extrapolate past returns and fundamentalists forecast a mean reverting dynamics of the exchange rate towards a fundamental value then we investigate the role of central bank interventions for explaining the switching properties between the two types of agents we find evidence that in the medium run interventions increase the proportion of fundamentalists and therefore exert some stabilizing influence on the exchange rate

exchange rate pass through in emu acceding countries empirical analysis and policy implications abstract countries that joined the european union in 2004 have to decide when to adopt the euro this decision depends on the evaluation of the relative costs and benefits associated with giving up the exchange rate instrument recent empirical work on several new eu members has questioned the role of the exchange rate as a shock absorber thus downplaying the potential costs in terms of macroeconomic stabilization in this paper we address the issue from a different perspective emphasizing the role of pass through from exchange rate to domestic inflation in new eu members the focus is on four countries czech republic hungary poland and slovenia nm 4 that have adopted some form of floating or managed exchange rate regimes the paper reports empirical results indicating high pass through coefficients and links them to the degree of policy accommodation high exchange rate pass through in nm 4 indicates that stabilization of nominal exchange rates would lower inflationary pressures and help fulfill criteria to enter the emu

mapping the cost risk of agricultural residue supply for energy application in rural china this research aims to shed light on the interaction mechanism of cost risks for biomass material supply in power generation especially for biomass coal dual fuel systems firstly a game model is established to analyze interactions among factors including unit procurement cost unit transportation cost basic price and coal price for crop residue collection secondly a monte carlo simulation is implemented to compare the profit increase under material competition with that under price alliance the methodology is illustrated with a case study in a biomass power plant in shandong province china it shows that developing a price alliance will benefit both the allied enterprises and the local collection area in most circumstances thirdly a risk tolerance area approach is applied in mapping the cost risk and in explaining the risky circumstances of the case study

exchange rate risk premiums abstract a state space model which allows for the covariation of risk premiums and unexpected rates of depreciation is used to study exchange rate risk premiums we find that exchange rate risk premiums have a high degree of persistence and the covariance of risk premiums and unexpected rates of depreciation is negative regressions of the estimated risk premium on its determinants implied by the equilibrium model of lucas 1982 show limited support for the model jel f31

the time variation of risk and return in foreign exchange markets a general equilibrium perspective this article successively introduces variable velocity durability and habit persistence in a standard two country general equilibrium model and explores their effects on the variability of exchange rate changes forward premiums and the foreign exchange risk premium a new feature of the model is that agents make decisions at a weekly frequency and face conditionally heteroskedastic shocks nevertheless even the most complex model fails to deliver sufficiently variable risk premiums without causing forward premiums and exchange rates to be excessively variable unlike previous models the model can roughly match the persistence of forward premiums article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

a feedstock supply model integrating the official organization for china s biomass generation plants abstract shortage of feedstock has hindered the development of china s biomass power generation because it is highly difficult to collect straw in china we pioneered a new feedstock supply model in which the formal official organization of villagers committees is introduced different from the previous feedstock supply patterns the immaterial utility of relative stakeholders and the impact of villagers committees on farmers behavior are considered in this paper to compare this pattern s performance with that of the conventional ones this paper developed a multi agent model specifically for china s situation we applied the model to simulate the operation of a biomass supply chain the results show that the proposed feedstock supply pattern can significantly increase the profits of biomass plants biomass supply amounts and farmers participation and in contrast with the broker pattern it can lower feedstock prices through disintermediation sensitivity analyses show that preferential feed in tariffs are still necessary for biomass power and that the new pattern can ease the government s subsidy burdens additionally farmers opportunity costs for supplying biomass their perceptions of immaterial utility and the cooperative s financial resource schemes of the public welfare fund all have differing impacts on the achievement of the new pattern

sell or not sell biodiesel local competition and government measures the introduction of biofuels is one of the objectives of the european union for this reason measures to promote the production and consumption of this product have been implemented such as tax exemptions fixing a minimum amount of mixture or the introduction of public transport that consume biofuels in this paper we test different factors that can affect the introduction of biodiesel in the spanish gasoline market these factors are mainly the level of local competition technical difficulties and local government action empirical evidence shows that a higher level of competition more buses that consume biodiesel and a lower adjustment costs increase significantly the probability of sell biodiesel at service stations these results show how the promotion of competition and public procurement of vehicles can improve the commercialization of biofuels

conditional variance and the risk premium in the foreign exchange market abstract we investigate the existence of a risk premium in the foreign exchange market based on the conditional variance of market forecast errors the forecast errors are assumed to follow the arch process introduced by engle 1982 estimation and diagnostic testing of the model are discussed and results are presented for the currencies of the united kingdom france germany japan and switzerland