monetary policy aggregate uncertainty and the stock market the authors develop and analyze a simple general equilibrium model of asset pricing in a monetary economy where the growth rate in money is partially determined by the policy of the monetary authority their model implies that the relationship between stock prices and consumption risk is systematically dependent on the monetary policy regime indicates that a rise in the noise associated with a given future monetary policy unambiguously increases current stock prices and formalizes the geske roll 1983 explanation for the observed negative correlation between stock returns and inflation copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

management of social issues in supply chains a literature review exploring social issues actions and performance outcomes the social dimension of sustainable development and its impact on supply chains have so far received less attention than the environmental dimension the aim of the research is to explore the intersection between social issues corporate social responsibility csr actions and performance outcomes a structured literature review of social issues in supply chains is presented analysing the research published so far in peer reviewed publications linking csr and supply chain management allows the exploration of strategies and performance outcomes with a focus on social issues the corresponding responsible supply chain actions adopted by firms to address these issues are grouped into communication compliance and supplier development strategies social and economic as well as buyer and supplier performance are identified as the key outcomes but the interactions among these constructs would require further research this paper contributes to the understanding of managing social issues in supply chains by linking social issues responsible supply chain actions and performance outcomes the paper consolidates related research by offering an overarching conceptual framework and points to future research directions and simultaneously provides insights into the management of social issues in supply chains

voluntary governance mechanisms in global supply chains beyond csr to a stakeholder utility perspective poor working conditions remain a serious problem in supplier facilities in developing countries while previous research has explored this from the developed buyers side we examine this phenomenon from the perspective of developing countries suppliers and subcontractors utilizing qualitative data from a major knitwear exporting cluster in india and a stakeholder management lens we develop a framework that shows how the assumptions of conventional buyer driven voluntary governance break down in the dilution of buyer power and in the web of factors rooted in suppliers traditions beliefs local demands and resource dependency we reveal out how success in governing collaborative global supply chains often falls short within the subcontracting stage where a stakeholder management mindset is elusive to most participants we suggest that success in governing collaborative global supply chains is dependent on concepts of stakeholder utility and the presence of shared value that is often at odds with the realities of power information asymmetry and compliance reward systems inherent in the non market coordination of global supply chains our findings offer important insights for delineating the concepts of value creation from csr concepts and practices and for modifying the basic assumptions of conventional supply chain governance

the reaction of interest rates to unanticipated federal reserve actions and statements implications for the money announcement controversy this paper examines the reaction of long and short term interest rates to monetary policy surprises that influenced market expectations of the future behavior of the federal funds rate in the period after october 1979 we find that the relative reaction of long and short term rates to policy surprises is similar to the relative reaction of these rates to money announcements consequently we conclude that the large reaction of long term interest rates to money announcements in the period after october 1979 is consistent with the policy anticipations hypothesis which views this reaction as a movement in real interest rates

monetary policy regimes expected inflation and the response of interest rates to money announcements this paper examines the response of the term structure of interest rates to weekly money announcements estimated responses for both the pre and post october 1979 periods are first presented then two competing hypotheses involving the policy anticipations and expected inflation effects are formally specified and compared with the estimated responses both hypotheses are found to be consistent with the responses but they have sharply different implications about the federal reserve s short run monetary policy by exploiting these different implications additional empirical results focusing directly on the money stock process support the policy anticipations hypothesis

money supply announcements and interest rates another view in this paper i use a new approach to analyze the impact of money supply announcements on the bond market before 1980 the only available work on this subject consisted of a few unpublished papers by conrad 1978 sivesind 1978 and urich 1979 1 more recently published papers by grossman 1981 and urich and wachtel 1981 have appeared roley 1982 extends the grossman study to incorporate data after the federal reserve policy statement of october 6 1979 both grossman and urich and wachtel are primarily concerned with the question of money market efficiency using survey data made available by money market services of san francisco and data on treasury bill yields each finds that the market responds quickly to unanticipated changes in the money supply but that anticipated changes have no effect on interest rates in addition grossman finds that when he adds other variables such as past changes in the money

money supply announcements and real economic activity abstract this paper derives testable implications of a model due to siegel 1985 in which interest rates react to announced innovations in the money supply solely because money announcements reveal information about real economic activity tests of these implications yield results inconsistent with the model in addition the results contradict the finding of huizinga and leiderman 1987 that interest rates tended to rise in response to unexpected increases in the monetary base from october 1979 to february 1984

the money supply announcements puzzle comment in a recent paper in this review 1983 bradford cornell presented a survey of existing literature on the empirical relationship between weekly money supply announcements made by the federal reserve and changes in the spot prices of several financial instruments at the time of the announcement cornell sought to unify and extend the work done in this area by estimating a number of relationships which bear directly on this issue among his main conclusions are that asset markets are efficient with re spect to money supply announcements since only the unexpected component of the announcement is correlated with price changes and that the unexpected compo nent of money supply announcements has a highly significant positive correlation with short term interest rates but only after the october 6 1979 change in fed policy p 651 both of these conclusions are at vari ance with results reported in similar studies by jacob grossman 1981 v vance roley 1982 and thomas urich and paul wachtel 1981 all three find that unanticipated announcements matter in periods before october 6 1979 and roley and urich wachtel find that anticipated announcements matter in at least some of their regressions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the influence of fundamentals on exchange rates findings from analyses of news effects as we survey the literature of macroeconomic news in the foreign exchange market we can by now look back on nearly 30 years of research the first studies which analysed news effects on exchange rates were established in the early 1990s see for example dornbusch almost at the same time meese and rogoff published their influential paper revealing the forecasting inferiority in exchange rates of structural models against the random walk this finding has shocked the pillars of exchange rate economics and thus cast general suspicion on research focusing on fundamentals in this field the eventual rising popularity of event studies can partly be attributed to the re establishment of the raison d etre of exchange rate economics this work focuses on systematically surveying this literature with particular respect to its primary goal i e shedding light on the analytical value of fundamental research thus its major findings are first fundamental news does matter whereas non fundamental news matters to a lesser degree second news influences exchange rates via two separated channels i e incorporating common information into prices directly or indirectly based upon order flow third with a few exceptions the impact of fundamental news on exchange rates is fairly stable over time

clusters chains and compliance corporate social responsibility and governance in football manufacturing in south asia a recent concern in the debate on corporate social responsibility csr in developing countries relates to the tension between demands for csr compliance found in many global value chains gvcs and the search for locally appropriate responses to these pressures in this context an emerging and relatively understudied area of interest relates to small firm industrial clusters local clusters offer the potential for local joint action and thus a basis for improving local compliance on csr through collective monitoring and local governance this article explores the interrelationship between global governance exercised through gvc ties and local governance via cluster institutions in ensuring compliance with csr pressures it undertakes a comparative analysis of two leading export oriented football manufacturing clusters in south asia that have both faced common challenges on child labour the article shows that both forms vertical and horizontal governance have played a part in shaping the response of the two clusters on child labour moreover these two distinct forms of governance have also led to quite differentiated outcomes in terms of forms of work organization and child labour monitoring this raises broader questions on how global csr demands can locally be better embedded and the conditions under which football stitchers labour in these new work forms

the effect of unanticipated money on the money and foreign exchange markets abstract a number of studies have attempted to determine why unanticipated increases in the money supply are positively correlated with money market interest rates by examining the response of the foreign exchange market to unanticipated changes in the money stock they have found a significant positive relationship between unanticipated increases in the money supply and the foreign exchange value of the dollar and have interpreted this as evidence for the anticipated liquidity effect hypothesis however these results support this hypothesis only if both markets respond simultaneously to unanticipated changes in money this paper examines the cross market consistency of the response using six bilateral exchange rates and the treasury bill rate all measured over a narrow time interval the results show that in general these markets do not respond simultaneously to money announcements

international order flows explaining equity and exchange rate returns macroeconomic models of equity and exchange rate returns perform poorly at high frequencies the proportion of daily returns that these models explain is essentially zero instead of relying on macroeconomic determinants we model equity price and exchange rate behavior based on a concept from microstructure order flow the international order flows are derived from belief changes of different investor groups in a two country setting we obtain a structural relationship between equity returns exchange rate returns and their relationship to home and foreign equity market order flow to test the model we construct daily aggregate order flow data from 800 million equity trades in the u s and france from 1999 to 2003 almost 60 of the daily returns in the s p100 index are explained jointly by exchange rate returns and aggregate order flows in both markets as predicted by the model daily exchange rate returns and order flow into the french market have significant incremental explanatory power for the daily s p returns the model implications are also validated for intraday returns

monetary policy exchange rates and investment in a keynesian economy abstract this paper embeds in an otherwise conventional macroeconomic model the assumption of rational investment decisions in a world in which investment goods can be imported expansionary monetary policy will lead to a reduction in domestic investment if i the share of imports in total investment expenditure is high enough and ii keynesian nominal price rigidities vanish slowly enough expansionary fiscal policy tends to crowd in domestic investment

real financial market exchange rates and capital flows foreign exchange rates asset prices and capital movements are expected to be closely related to each other as international capital markets become more and more integrated this paper provides new empirical evidence from an index of exchange rate adjusted cross country asset price ratios which may be interpreted as a real effective financial exchange rate the integrated stock flow approach reveals that a country s real effective financial exchange rate is cointegrated with international investors net foreign holdings of its assets the associated error correction equations have useful interpretations against the backdrop of uncovered return parity and investor portfolio rebalancing behavior

bear squeezes volatility spillovers and speculative attacks in the hyperinflation 1920s foreign exchange abstract this paper examines some of the characteristics of the foreign exchange market in the 1920s floating period nominal returns appear to exhibit properties consistent with asset prices on modern more well organized financial markets i e they appear to be well described by martingales and possess persistent time dependent heteroscedasticity in order to deal with the extreme kurtosis in the exchange rate series we use robust inferential methods to test for volatility spillovers and shocks that might effect subsequent mean returns apart from some particularly abnormal bear squeeze episodes the markets appear remarkably efficient

the impact of terms of trade and real exchange rate volatility on investment and growth in sub saharan africa abstract specialization in primary product exports reduces growth but why adverse trends in and the high variance of primary product prices are possible explanations the impact on investment and growth of the level and volatility of the terms of trade and the real effective exchange rate is estimated for a panel of 14 sub saharan african countries over 1980 1995 growth is negatively affected by terms of trade instability and investment by real exchange rate instability both growth and investment increase when the terms of trade improve and real exchange rate overvaluation is eliminated

asymmetric impact of monetary surprises on exchange rate abstractthis paper examines the asymmetric response of exchange rate to monetary surprises after controlling the type direction and origin of the news as well as business cycle phase a new asymmetry is found in the response of the exchange rate to news surprises in specific the us dollar depreciates against major currencies as the response to the negative monetary surprises in the 2001 recession while the dollar appreciates responding to similar negative monetary surprises during the 2008 recession the paper further explores possible causes and finds that time varying status of the currency with higher financial returns may contribute to the new asymmetry

comparing time series and survey forecasts of weekly changes in money a methodological note measured as the difference between the announced change and the expected change derived from the money market services inc weekly survey of government securities dealers unlike other survey measures of expectations the most notable example of which is the livingston survey data these expectations are formed by active market participants consequently the survey s forecast made public before the fed s announcement of the actual change in the money stock is commonly thought to represent the market s expectation the concern in this paper is not with the impact of unanticipated money changes on nominal interest rates the purpose is to compare the relative forecasting abilities of the survey predictions and those obtained from a timeseries model this question is of interest because the weekly money series used in previous research includes certain abnormal weeks in which exogenous factors may significantly alter the series stochastic properties see for example cornell 1 urich and wachtel 9 thus the influence of these abnormal weeks weeks that include benchmark revisions changes in seasonal factors and weeks in which there is a social security effect is examined by comparing forecasting results for two samples one includes these weeks and the other deletes them following pearce 6 this approach allows us to test the hypothesis that the survey responses are at least weak form rational and to see how sensitive this test is to the sample of weeks used unlike previous studies we use two survey forecast series the median forecast made public prior to the announced change in ml and the mean series constructed from individual respondents forecasts zarnowitz s 10 examination of the asa nber survey forecasts indicates that the mean forecast is on average statistically superior to the median this finding is based on the idea that the mean forecast uses a more informationally diverse data set consequently it is

money supply announcements and interest rates does monetary policy matter abstract most current explanations of the effect of money supply announcements on the rate of interest center on central bank policy this paper analyzes a flexible price macroeconomic model where present and future monetary policy have no influence on either interest rates or real output but monetary data signal information about real economic activity which influences both short and long term real rates of interest the magnitude of the interest rate response is shown to depend on the difference in the income elasticities of currency and deposit demand and the relative size of monetary and real disturbances to the economy

interest rate dynamics and the term structure a note abstract the brennan and schwartz two factor model of the term structure is re examined using constant duration long term yields in place of the fluctuating duration consol yields and additional stability is achieved in the empirical estimations the model is then reformulated to examine more closely the relationship between changes in long and short rates of interest it is found that movements in the short rate of interest are related to movements in the long rate the spread between the long and short rates and the prior movement in the long rate the model is then tested for its out of sample predictive ability and found to possess a modest amount of predictive power

unanticipated interest rates bank stock returns and the nominal contracting hypothesis abstract the relationship between unexpected interest rate movements and bank stock returns is analyzed in the context of the nominal contracting hypothesis unanticipated changes in interest rates should influence individual bank profits and stock returns depending on the maturity characteristics of their assets relative to their liabilities this hypothesis is investigated by constructing portfolios on the basis of the nominal contracting positions of banks the main conclusion of this paper is that the wealth redistribution implications of the nominal contracting hypothesis is found to be unimportant in the determination of bank stock returns

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

monetary policy and long term interest rates an efficient markets approach abstract this paper is an application of efficient markets theory to analyze empirically the relationship of money supply growth and long term interest rates this approach has the advantage over calier research on this subject in that it imposes a theoretical structure on this relationship that flows easier interpretation of the empirical results as well as more powerful statistical tests on the interest of ascertaining the robustness of the results many different empirical tests are carried out in this paper and they uniformly do not support the preposition that increases in the money supply are correlated with declines in long rates

the exchange market announcement effects of belgian discount rate changes abstract in this study we analyze the announcement effects of changes in the belgium discount rate on the foreign exchange market our methodology involves two steps first we estimate time series models up to the day preceding a discount rate change and use these models to forecast the exchange rates in a second stage we test whether the forecasting errors contain an announcement effect the results indicate that a destabilizing announcement effect of discount rate changes can be found on the official market for the german mark

the term structure spread and future changes in long and short rates in the g7 countries abstract according to the expectations hypothesis when the spread between long and short rates widens next quarter s long rate should rise in the united states however long rates decline instead of rising this anomaly is also present in canada the uk germany and japan four of the additional six g7 countries nevertheless in contrast to the us where long rates appear to overreact to expected future developments the anomalous short run movement of long rates in these other g7 countries is caused by an additive white noise error on long rates that does not materially affect the information in their term structure

the effects of inflation and money supply announcements on interest rates this paper examines the impact of the money supply and inflation rate announcements on interest rates survey data on expectations of the money supply and consumer and producer price indexes are used to distinguish anticipated and unanticipated components of the announcements this distinction is used to test for the efficiency of the financial market response to the announcements of new information the results indicate that the unanticipated components of the announced changes in the producers price index and in the money supply have an immediate positive effect on short term interest rates the consumer price index announcement has no apparent effect there is no evidence of a delayed announcement effect however there is some indication of a liquidity effect of the money supply change on interest rates this takes place when reserves are changing and several weeks prior to the information announcement the effect of money supply announcements on interest rates has attracted considerable attention in both the academic literature and the financial press in the last few years it has been firmly established that unanticipated increases in the money supply lead to immediate increases in interest rates however there are several competing explanations for this phenomenon in the literature in this paper we present some additional empirical evidence which helps to distinguish between two of these hypotheses the policy anticipations and inflationary expectations hypotheses by examining the effect of money supply and inflation announcements on interest rates the positive effect on interest rates of announcements of unanticipated increases in the money supply was demonstrated by urich and wachtel 9 grossman 3 and roley 5 the announcement effect was interpreted in our earlier paper as a policy anticipations effect and has been interpreted by others e g cornell 1 as an inflationary expectations effect since both effects are in the same direction it is difficult to distinguish between them without additional evidence the policy anticipations effect is simply that an unanticipated increase in the money supply causes financial market participants to expect that the federal reserve will tighten the monetary reins in order to offset the increase in anticipation of future tightening there is a tendency for interest rates to increase the inflationary expectations effect is that an unanticipated increase

the emergence of corporate social responsibility in chile the importance of authenticity and social networks little is known about how and why corporate social responsibility csr emerged in lesser developed countries in order to address this knowledge gap we used chile as a test case and conducted a series of in depth interviews with leaders of csr initiatives we also did an internet and literature search to help provide support for the findings that emerged from our data we discovered that while there are similarities in the drivers of csr in developed countries there are distinct differences as well in particular we found that different sectors drive csr in chile in contrast to other geographies where consumer demand and government regulation provided the impetus for csr efforts multinational companies mncs and non governmental organizations ngos are key actors in chile mncs imported their csr beliefs skills and processes into chile their efforts resulted in a virtuous cycle once large domestic firms felt pressured by their mnc rivals they too adopted csr initiatives the ability to manage relationships with multiple stakeholders and perceptions of authenticity were also critical to the success of csr in chile using network theory as a lens we suggest that network density and centrality largely determine whether csr efforts will be authentic based on these contentions we suggest avenues for future research

domestic and international financial market responses to federal deficit announcements abstract this study examines the response of domestic and international financial variables to announced changes in federal deficit projections over the 1981 1994 period as observed in earlier studies rates on us treasury securities responded positively to announced increases in federal deficit projections new evidence shows that deficit effects are transmitted internationally with foreign long term interest rates also increasing in response to announced increases in us deficit projections the exchange value of the dollar tends to be positively related to announced changes in deficit projections but that result appears to be related to the degree of insulation of foreign financial markets from us financial markets finally the price of gold responded positively to announced changes in deficit projections taken together the results suggest that higher projected deficits raise real interest rates in part because of an increase in an inflation risk premium

exchange rates interest rates and money stock announcements a theoretical exposition abstract when the federal reserve announce a larger than anticipated weekly level of the us money stock m1 the dollar appreciates and short term interest rates increase because of an expected liquidity effect but long term interest rates and particularly long run forward interest rates increase because of an expected inflation effect the two effects are not mutually exclusive but coexist when market participants are not completely sure of the fed s policy rule and thus react in a weighted average manner with weights that reflect subjective probabilities about different federal reserve money growth policies

stakeholder forces of socially responsible supply chain management orientation this project investigates salient stakeholder forces of socially responsible supply chain orientation srsco in the apparel and footwear sector focusing on fair labor management issues srsco was conceptualized as a composite of internal organizational direction and external partnership for a creation and continuation of fair labor conditions throughout the supply chain primary stakeholders identified were consumers regulation industry and media a total of 209 mail survey responses from sourcing managers of u s apparel and footwear companies were analyzed two dimensions of srsco were confirmed internal direction and external partnership consumer and industry peer pressures were found significantly related to internal direction while industry peers and media were significantly related to the external partnership regulation was not significantly related to either internal direction or external partnerships lack of regulation forces to govern labor issues and roles of consumers industry peers and media in promoting fair labor management are discussed in this article

changing interest rate responses to money announcements 1977 1983 abstract this paper investigates when and how the response of interest rates to money announcements changed in recent years the response of both short and long rates rises in october 1979 but drops during 1981 during mid 1982 the response of long rates raises again but without a change in the response of short rates despite a number of ex post explanations for these shifts none of the major hypotheses of why interest rates respond to money announcements provides a complete ex ante explanation of these response shifts

how markets process information news releases and volatility we examine the impact of scheduled macroeconomic news announcements on interest rate and foreign exchange futures markets we find these announcements are responsible for most of the observed time of day and day of the week volatility patterns in these markets while the bulk of the price adjustment to a major announcement occurs within the first minute volatility remains substantially higher than normal for roughly fifteen minutes and slightly elevated for several hours nonetheless these subsequent price adjustments are basically independent of the first minute s return we identify those announcements with the greatest impact on these markets we examine the impact on interest rate and foreign exchange markets of scheduled macroeconomic news releases such as the employment report the consumer price index cpi and the producer price index ppi many market participants believe that such announcements have a major impact on financial markets indeed a small industry devoted to predicting the figures to be released in upcoming releases has evolved in recent years with the exception of the weekly money supply figures however the impact of such announcements on financial markets has received scant attention 1 this is doubly surprising given the considerable research interest in market volatility since these news releases are a potential source of much of this volatility consider for instance figure 1 as shown there prices in interest rate and foreign exchange futures markets are much more volatile between 8 30 and 8 35 a m eastern time et than during any other five minute trading period including

revisiting supplier compliance with mnc codes of conduct recoupling policy and practice at chinese toy suppliers does private regulation of workers rights in global value chains improve working conditions on the factory floor drawing on one of the first systematic longitudinal studies of supplier compliance with multinational corporation mnc codes of conduct this paper finds in contrast to previous research substantial improvements over time while in 2004 the four examined chinese toy suppliers violated most of the evaluated code of conduct criteria and consciously decoupled the code of conduct policy from actual practices by 2009 they had recoupled policy and practice and complied with nearly all examined criteria except working hours the paper contributes to the private regulation literature by challenging previous research claims identifying factors that could make private regulation effective and outlining a research method for empirically studying the effects of codes of conduct over time the paper also contributes to new institutional theory by discussing how recoupling could be influenced by two factors not identified in previous research i trusting relationships between the organization and the stakeholder exerting pressure and ii factors unrelated to main external pressures leading to accidental recoupling

deconstructing the relationship between corporate social and financial performance for four decades research on the role and responsibilities of business in society has centered on the business case for corporate social responsibility csr and an increasing number of studies on the corporate social performance csp corporate financial performance cfp link emerged leading to controversial results heeding the call for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms linking certain csr efforts to certain performance outcomes this study provides a stakeholder based organizing framework rooted in an extensive review of existing literature on the link between csp and cfp in so doing we aim at guiding research and practice toward less simplistic understandings of the csp cfp connection thus advancing the debate over the consequences of voluntary integrating csr into business operations and into relationships with stakeholders by disentangling specific drivers and outcomes of the csp cfp link we underline the importance of setting clear boundaries and specifying levels of analysis to generate comparable results

money supply announcements interest rates and foreign exchange abstract this paper presents a test of the joint hypothesis that money supply announcements affect the real interest rate and that changes in the real interest rate affect the exchange rate in the short run the test results are consistent with the joint hypothesis for example it is found that announcement of an unexpected jump in the money supply is accompanied by an increase in interest rates and an appreciation of the dollar if the rise in interest rates was entirely due to higher inflationary expectations the dollar should not appreciate

commodity own rates real interest rates and money supply announcements abstract this paper develops a measure of the real interest rate that is based on commodity own rates the rate at which one can contract to exchange units of a commodity today for units of the commodity in the future we use this measure to study the impact of money supply announcements on the real interest rate we find that money shocks have little effect on one and three month real interest rates however there is a strong positive relation between money shocks and six and twelve month real interest rates

reserves announcements and interest rates does monetary policy matter the author provides evidence on the perceived existence of strong liquidity effect the analysis is based on the response of the term structure of interest rates to the weekly federal reserve announcements of bank reserves during the post october 1979 period it is shown that unanticipated changes in the mix between borrowed and nonborrowed reserves cause expected real interest rates to change after the announcement because they provide information about a future change in the supply of money a precise model is developed and tested during subperiods of nonborrowed and borrowed reserves targeting by the fed

the credit view financial announcements and interesr rate responses abstract proponents of the credit view have argued that aggregate commercial bank lending decisions have strong macro economic effects this view is in contrast to the monetarist view that it is sufficient to consider the liability side of the banking sector s balance sheet in analyzing the economic outlook in this paper we examine whether or not financial markets reacted to unexpected changes in aggregate commercial bank lending during much of the 1980s in contrast to the implications of the credit view no evidence of a significant reaction to such shocks is uncovered however there is evidence to suggest that unexpected commercial paper activity is important to financial markets but the sign of the association is the opposite of that predicted by the credit view

can portfolio rebalancing explain the dynamics of equity returns equity flows and exchange rates we explore whether the pattern of international equity returns equity portfolio flows and exchange rate returns are consistent with the hypothesis that unhedged global investors rebalance their portfolio in order to limit their exchange rate exposure when there are 1 relative equity return and 2 exchange rate shocks we also explore whether 3 equity flow shocks influence the exchange rates and relative equity prices in the estimation of the var system we do not impose any causal ordering upon the primitive shocks but instead identify the system based on theoretical priors about the contemporaneous conditional correlations between the three variables international data for the five largest equity markets are consistent with a theory in which equity returns and portfolio rebalancing are an important source of exchange rate dynamics

poundm3 surprises and asset prices in this paper the relationship between unanticipated sterling m3 m3 and a variety of asset prices is investigated for part of the uk s experience with monetary targeting the unanticipated component of monetary growth is generated using money market services uk survey data and an arima model it is demonstrated that the uk survey data are rational in that they are an unbiased and efficient forecast and that the market efficiently incorporates unanticipated money growth into asset prices the sign of the unanticipated monetary component in our asset price equations tends to indicate that the fisher the inflation expectations hypothesis is better supported during the sample period

market response to the weekly money supply announcements in the 1970s the hypothesis that the weekly announcement of the money supply affects interest rates is examined the announcement effect is interpreted as a policy anticipation effect that is an unanticipated increase in the money supply leads to an increase in interest rates in anticipation of future tightening by the federal reserve estimates of this effect with proxies for the unanticipated change constructed from a survey of money supply forecasts and an arima model indicate that a financial markets respond very quickly to the announcement and b the response was largest when policymakers emphasized the importance of the monetary aggregates financial market participants are careful observers of the weekly money supply announcement and generally agree that the announcement often leads to changes in interest rates this occurs because the announcement leads market participants to revise their expectations both of future federal reserve policy actions and of future economic conditions in this paper we examine the response of yields on treasury bills to the announcement of the money supply and the extent to which that response has varied in the last ten years money supply announcements may affect market interest rates in three ways first actual expansion of the money supply leads to lower interest rates through a liquidity effect however rapid monetary growth which is not anticipated leads market participants to expect the federal reserve to counteract such growth in the future as a consequence there may be a policy anticipation effect which causes higher interest rates in anticipation of future tightening furthermore prolonged rapid monetary growth also creates inflation and inflationary expectations which lead to higher interest rates thus there may exist a third effect the inflationary expectations effect which also leads to higher interest rates our interest in this paper is in the immediate market response to the weekly announcement of the money supply which as we argue below is most likely to be a policy anticipation effect the policy anticipation effect is best described by example suppose that the announced change in the money supply exceeds that which was expected by

market perceptions of federal reserve policy and the weekly monetary announcements abstract in october 1979 the federal reserve altered its operating procedures emphasizing control of the growth rate of the money stock was the fed able to gain credibility in the market the paper investigates this question by examining the reactions of spot and expected future exchange rates foreign interest rates and long run domestic forward interest rates to the weekly federal reserve announcements of m l both before and after october 1979 the empirical evidence points out that the fed did gain credibility but was unable to establish full credibility the market reactions are consistent with the hypothesis that market participants attached a positive probability to the event that the fed may at some point in the future abandon its money stock targets

are harvest forecasts news usda announcements and futures market reactions futures market price data for maize and soyabeans are used to examine reactions to us department of agriculture harvest forecasts these forecasts are widely known and reasonably accurate so failure to find significant reaction would indicate that the usda did not contribute additional news relative to information already possessed by traders various t tests f tests and nonparametric chi square tests indicate rejection of the null hypothesis of no significant difference between means of absolute values or variances of changes in closing prices on days following a usda announcement and other days thus the data indicate that significant information is contained in the forecasts

the informational efficiency of weekly money announcements an econometric critique studies of the weekly money announcement have found markets to be informationally efficient we demonstrate that this result apparently is related to one or more sources of bias and measurement error that have been introduced to the estimating equations of previous studies after correcting for these sources of bias and estimating the modified model over the samples employed in earlier studies we still find evidence to reject the hypothesis of informational efficiency an alternative explanation is that auxiliary assumptions imposed for empirical convenience introduce measurement error that affects standard tests of the efficient markets hypothesis

the impact of monetary announcements on forward interest rates movements in term premia or expected future rates abstract evidence is presented on how the response of forward interest rates to money supply and monetary base announcements is decomposed into movements in term premia and expected future interest rates a significant movement of each component is found for at least one sample period

the return of the liquidity effect a study of the short run relation between money growth and interest rates in this article i use band pass filters to investigate the short run relationship between money growth and interest rates i find a negative correlation between short run movements in money growth and interest rates which i interpret as evidence that the liquidity effect dominates the anticipated inflation effect

the changing influence of money and monetary policy on exchange rates foreign exchange dealers said the american currency got an additional boost after the federal reserve reported that the nation s money supply rose 700 million in the latest week a development that is likely to put upward pressure on interest rates most economists had been expecting a decline in the money supply figures the wall street journal 25 january 1982 14 i introduction the importance of the linkage between money and asset prices such as interest rates and exchange rates is now well understood friedman 1990 12 writes given the familiar dependence of imports and exports on real exchange rates together with the dollar s evident relationship to interest rates the combination of a larger foreign sector in the u s economy and flexible exchange rates has clearly opened new avenues for monetary policy to affect economic activity however the precise nature of the relationship between money and exchange rates has long been a topic for research in international economics with the adoption of a system of floating exchange rates by most of the industrialized countries in march 1973 and the development of the rational expectations efficient markets hypotheses attempts to model observed fluctuations in exchange rates have focused on incorporating the important role of expectations of particular interest to the research in this paper is the dornbusch 1976 overshooting model which provided the structural foundation for the work of engel and frankel 1984 in the money announcements literature in the money announcements literature researchers employed unanticipated money announcements defined as the difference between announced and expected m1 to examine the linkage between money and asset prices as hakkio and pearce 1985 point out the research on foreign exchange rates in this laboratory was motivated by mussa s 1979 empirical findings in support of the efficient markets theory i e changes in exchange rates are unpredictable and are largely the result of the impact of new information on expectations in this literature researchers commonly regressed changes in the exchange rate on unanticipated money over sample periods which coincided with different policy regimes at the federal reserve to determine if the coefficient on unanticipated money say b sub 1 varied from one policy regime to another overall their findings uncover a significant link between unanticipated money and exchange rates and the size sign and significance of b sub 1 varies from one sample period to another 1 while suggestive the apparent link between changes in b sub 1 and changes in fed policy regimes is difficult to evaluate absent a model which formally incorporates such a link 2 thus my objective in this paper is to develop a basic theoretical empirical link between fluctuations in b sub 1 and changes in fed policy regimes i begin by extending the important work of engel and frankel 1984 in section ii to incorporate a policy feedback parameter g sub 1 in the money supply process which will represent the rational expectation of the type of monetary control regime in place at the federal reserve at the time of a money announcement it is shown that the magnitude of the response of exchange rates to an unanticipated announcement is mainly driven by agents expectations of the federal reserve s response to the deviation of the actual money supply from a pre specified target in section iii the time varying response of the dollar german mark exchange rate to weekly unanticipated money announcements b sub 1t and the time varying policy feedback parameter g sub 1t which reflects the adjustment of the federal funds rate to money away from target are estimated on a weekly basis using these estimates the variation of the coefficient b sub 1t vis a vis the changes in g sub 1t is examined over the january 1978 to december 1982 sample period the results provide considerable support for the hypothesized link between parameters b

herding on noise the case of johnson redbook s weekly retail sales data recent models of herding suggest that speculators may rationally trade on information unrelated to fundamentals when their trading horizons are short this study provides an empirical example where this appears to be the case johnson redbook s weekly retail sales figures predicted bond returns for a short time after a significant number of bond traders began purchasing and trading on the data the significant relationship between the data and bond returns disappeared just after the wall street journal started to report it mean while there was little or no change in the relationship between the data and retailers stock returns perhaps because the data have long been followed by retail stock analysts johnson redbook s original investor clientele

long run determinants of the irish real exchange rate smooth adjustment to real exchange rate shifts is one of the major challenges facing the irish economy under emu rather than assume purchasing power parity the long run real exchange rate is modelled as time varying being determined by relative output levels the terms of trade and the net foreign asset position it is shown that these factors account for a large proportion of the long run movement in the irish real exchange rate

europe and global imbalances although europe in the aggregate is not a major contributor to global current account imbalances its trade and financial linkages with the rest of the world mean that it will still be affected by a shift in the current configuration of external deficits and surpluses we assess the macroeconomic impact on europe of global current account adjustment under alternative scenarios emphasizing both trade and financial channels finally we consider heterogeneous exposure across individual european economies to external adjustment shocks philip r lane and gian maria milesi ferretti

us money supply announcements and pacific rim stock markets evidence and implications this paper documents variation across pacific rim countries in the response of equity values to us m1 announcement suprises we relate the difference across countries to measures of capital mobility export trade with the usa foreign exchange and money market arrangements and correlation with the us stock market we find that the response to us m1 suprises is best explained by the country s degree of integration with international capital markets the flexibility of the exchange rate and interest rates may also be significant while the evidence is supportive of the anticipated fed reaction theory of the effect of money announcement suprises the differing response ro m1 shocks across fed policy regimes remains unexplained

trade deficit announcements intervention and the dollar abstract the effect of u s trade deficit announcements on the dollar exchange rate from 1980 1988 is examined the announcement is found to affect the dollar only after mid 1984 central bank intervention does not appear to have had a consistent impact on the dollar on the day of the announcement

the signalling role of base and money announcements and their effects on interest rates abstract this paper demonstrates that unexpected changes in the announced monetary base have an impact on interest rates above and beyond the impact of unexpected changes in the announced money supply in addition both money supply and monetary base announcements are shown to have a significant signalling role for subsequent changes in monetary aggregates however in contrast to several leading hypotheses it appears that the observed link between monetary announcements and interest rates is not attributable to the signals that announcements provide about the subsequent behavior of money and the base

asian transnational corporations and labor rights vietnamese trade unions in taiwan invested companies according to the reports in the past decade some asian subcontractors mainly taiwan hong kong and korea transnational corporations tend to be labor abusive in their overseas investment destinations like china or southeast asia taking vietnam as an example this paper raises questions as to why taiwanese transnational companies can control workplace unions in a trade union supportive regime given the government s constraint of political rights and the individualized workplace unions the function of trade unions in vietnam is destined to be limited the trade unions turn out be an arm of management rather than representing workers interests in these transnational companies this article also explores the influence of the newly developed codes of conducts from western buyers in the survey of three companies which are required to follow the codes of conduct by buyers trade unions had no more freedom than those in companies without codes of conduct the paper discusses the implications of this research offering strategies for labor rights improvements

the impact of money on short term interest rates this study reviews empirical evidence from four research methods related to the impact of money on short term nominal rates the studies consistently fail to find evidence supporting the much hypothesized short term negative relationship between money and nominal rates since at least april 1975 reasons for the absence of a negative relationship include the tendency of financial markets to anticipate corrective action by the fed whenever ml deviates from targeted growth ranges and a rapid adjustment of inflationary expectations to changes in money growth

interest rates and monetary policy uncertainty abstract this paper analyzes a model in which optimizing households are uncertain about monetary policy and learn about it over time in this model the variance of changes in nominal and ex post real interest rates increases with the variance of the household s predictive distribution over money growth a positive relation between unexpected changes in nominal interest rates and the money stock results from monetary policy uncertainty finally if money growth covaries negatively with real wealth an increase in monetary policy uncertainty increases the expected real rate of interest and decreases the nominal rate of interest

discount rate changes and the foreign exchange market abstract changes in the discount rate can have associated announcement effects on the foreign exchange value of the dollar only if these changes are not anticipated by the market this paper provides evidence to support this contention specifically discount rate changes made for reasons other than technical adjustments have not been anticipated fully and consequently their announcements have had a significant impact on the dollar s exchange rate furthermore results are obtained that support the hypothesis that unanticipated discount rate changes alter inflationary expectations

using financial prices to test exchange rate models a note the purpose of this note is to illustrate how tests of exchange rate models can be conducted using financial prices rather than macroeconomic data all empirical tests of exchange rate models have met with limited success so far a major problem encountered is the poor quality of the macroeconomic data used most of the data suffer from large measurement error or cannot even be measured directly for example these models often require measures of changes in expected real activity or in monetary policy such variables can only be poorly estimated from time series models on industrial production or money supply the innovation in this paper is to use financial prices such as stock prices instead of the traditional macroeconomic data there exists convincing empirical evidence that stock returns forecast changes in economic activity as measured by industrial production real growth in gnp employment rate or corporate profits fama 5 and geske and roll 8 in the domestic context stock prices have been used to test the relation between economic activity and inflation e g fama 5 geske and roll 8 and solnik 12 in the same spirit stock returns are used in this paper as proxies for changes in economic activity to test the relation between exchange rates and economic activity interest rates are determined by monetary policies and changes in interest rates are used in this article as indicators of monetary shocks the approach used is introduced in section i while the empirical results are presented in section ii the data cover the eight major western countries over the recent period of flexible exchange rates july 1973 to december 1983

monetary policy announcements and market interest rates response evidence from china abstract this paper examines the daily responses of market interest rates to three monetary policy announcements in china using the event study approach i find that the interest rate responses to announced changes in the regulated retail interest rate and the required reserve ratio are positive and significant at all maturities of interest rates but smaller at the long end of the yield curve by contrast market interest rates barely respond to the qualitative mpc announcements about the monetary policy stance these findings are robust to alternative econometric methods that correct for potential bias arising from violations of the identification assumption these findings suggest that the pbc should formulate its policy communication in a quantitative way

social security payments money supply announcements and interest rates abstract a monthly cycle existed in initially announced changes in seasonally adjusted m1 for a period extending at least from september 1977 to february 1984 this cycle was the source of systematic errors in the widely used money market services forecast of m1 such errors can induce a spurious relation between interest rates and expected changes in the money supply when the survey forecasts are corrected to eliminate systematic errors the apparent negative relation between interest rates and expected money supply changes disappears interest rates were not systematically related to either anticipated or unanticipated money supply changes during the period february 1984 to december 1986

the contribution of environmental and social standards towards ensuring legitimacy in supply chain governance increasingly companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility csr in supply chains this is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders yet a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies using them as a legitimacy front this strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long term trust in these instruments of csr meaning that all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies therefore this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company s aim but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards this research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research comparing four different social and environmental standards revealing weaknesses and strengths it exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data

embedding csr values the global footwear industry s evolving governance structure many transnational corporations and international organizations have embraced corporate social responsibility csr to address criticisms of working and environmental conditions at subcontractors factories while csr codes of conduct are easy to draft supplier compliance has been elusive even third party monitoring has proven an incomplete solution this article proposes that an alteration in the supply chain s governance from an arms length market model to a collaborative partnership often will be necessary to effectuate csr the market model forces contractors to focus on price and delivery as they compete for the lead firm s business rendering csr observance secondary at best a collaborative partnership where the lead firm gives select suppliers secure product orders and other benefits removes disincentives and adds incentives for csr compliance in time the suppliers csr habit should shift their business philosophy toward pursuing csr as an end in itself regardless of buyer incentives and monitoring this article examines these hypotheses in the context of the athletic footwear sector with nike inc and its suppliers as the specific case study the data collected and conclusions reached offer strategies for advancing csr beyond the superficial and often ineffectual code of conduct stage