purchase bidding strategies of an energy coalition with demand response capabilities the implementation of demand response programs drp has gained interest as a means to alleviate energy consumption during peak hours two explanations account for the success of such programs which involve both utilities and electricity consumers with the latter often organized into coalitions the system operator meets its goal of reducing the load peak simultaneously electricity consumers achieve economic benefits when reducing consumption during peak hours in this paper a monte carlo based algorithm has been proposed for the formulation of multiple purchase offers in the day ahead energy market daem by coalitions in which consumers vary in their sensitivity to drp manifesting different responsiveness to hourly tariffs based on the hourly market clearing prices being able to monitor how coalition members use air conditioning in the presence of variable hourly energy tariffs the coordinator can then define a purchase bidding strategy depending on how price sensitive the coalition is simulation results show that the presence of a price sensitive demand leads not only to a subsequent reduction in energy prices during peak hours but also leads to a decrease in their inter hour volatility

real exchange rate dynamics with nominal parities structural change and overshooting abstract the relationship between structural changes that require a modification of the steady state level of the real exchange rate is examined in terms of a model of staggered prices and real wealth effects although wealth effects are necessary for overshooting it is shown that their actual values are of no particular relevance in fact overshooting is shown to be more likely the smaller is the real wealth effect in the demand for tradables a key and counterintuitive result is that overshooting is more likely the higher is the frequency of price changes

imported inputs real wage rigidity and devaluation in the small open economy abstract this paper examines the effects of devaluation upon employment in a tradables nontradables model of the small open economy where there is a rigid real wage and imports consist of both intermediate inputs and final goods it is shown that in general economies importing intermediates are not more prone to contraction than those importing only consumption goods a new reason is also uncovered as to why the existence of an initial trade balance deficit increases the likelihood that devaluation will be contractionary

foreign capital and the contractionary impact of currency devaluation with an application to jamaica abstract this paper analyses the effects of currency devaluation in a small open economy host to foreign capital using a short run macroeconomic model of the krugman taylor 1978 type it is shown that the presence of foreign capital provides devaluation with an additional contractionary mechanism besides those already identified in the literature the mechanism has its basis on the redistribution of income from wages to profits creasted by devaluation which raises the foreign component of domestic income and tends to reduce gnp and gdp the role of taxation policy in this context is examined finally estimates of the relevant effects are offered for jamaica a small mineral exporter showing that an expansionary effect of devaluation must rely on a relatively high value of the supply elasticity of non mineral exports

how to value employee stock options one of the arguments often used against expensing employee stock options is that calculating their fair value at the time they are granted is very difficult this article presents an approach to calculating the value of employee stock options that is practical easy to implement and theoretically sound it explicitly considers the vesting period the possibility that employees will leave the company during the life of the option the inability of employees to trade their options and the relevant dilution issues this approach is an enhancement of the approach suggested by the financial accounting standards board s statement of financial accounting standards no 123 because it does not require an arbitrary reduction in the life of the option to allow for early exercise caused by the inability of employees to trade their options

demand side bidding agents modeling and simulation problems such as price volatility have been observed in electric power markets demand side participation is frequently offered as a potential solution by promising to increase market efficiency when hockey stick type offer curves are present however the individual end consumer will surely value electricity differently which makes demand side participation difficult as a group and at a bus in this paper demand is categorized into two groups one that highly values reliability and one that does not the two types are modeled separately and a new optimal bidding function is developed and tested based on this model

psychological factors and stock option exercise we investigate stock option exercise decisions by over 50 000 employees at seven corporations controlling for economic factors psychological factors influence exercise consistent with psychological models of beliefs employees exercise in response to stock price trends exercise is positively related to stock returns during the preceding month and negatively related to returns over longer horizons consistent with psychological models of values that include reference points employee exercise activity roughly doubles when the stock price exceeds the maximum price attained during the previous year

employee reload options pricing hedging and optimal exercise reload options call options granting new options on exercise are popularly used in compensation although the compound option feature may seem complicated there is a distribution free dominant policy of exercising reload options whenever they are in the money the optimal policy implies general formulas for numerical valuation simpler formulas for valuation and hedging follow from black scholes assumptions with or without continuous dividends time vesting affects the optimal policy but numerical results indicate that it is nearly optimal to exercise in the money whenever feasible the results suggest that reload options produce similar incentives as employee stock options and share grants the valuation of options in compensation schemes is important for several reasons valuations are needed for preparing accounting statements and tax returns and more generally for understanding what value has been promised to the employees and what residual value remains with the shareholders furthermore understanding the hedge ratios and the overall shape of the valuation function clarifies the employee s risk exposure and incentives this article studies the optimal exercise and valuation of a relatively new but increasingly commonplace type of employee stock option the reload option these options have attracted a fair amount of controversy we believe that in large part this controversy is due to a seemingly complex structure in the statement of financial accounting standards sfas 123 financial accounting standards board 1995 paragraph 186 concludes the board continues to believe that ideally the value of a reload option should be estimated on the grant date taking into account all of its features however at this time it is not feasible to do so on close examination however these options are in fact comparatively simple to analyze and understand moreover under black and scholes 1973 assumptions on the stock price we are able to provide explicit valuation and hedging formulas we hope our analysis helps to demystify reload options and permit a more focused debate

exercise behavior valuation and the incentive effects of employee stock options abstract we use a large database on eso exercises to document characteristics of exercise behavior and calibrate a utility based model for measuring how differences in exercise behavior are manifested in option values and incentives option values and incentives computed from the model calibrations are compared to those computed from models used to value tradable options our analysis provides guidance to both academics and practitioners about how differences in exercise behavior and model choice affect measures of eso values and incentives and underscores the importance of gaining a thorough understanding of the underlying economic forces that affect the behavior of eso holders

can appreciation be expansionary evidence from the euro area summarywe identify exogenous effects of shifts in effective exchange rates for euro area ea countries between 1999 and 2016 the identification strategy is based on an external instrument built on the assumption that movements in the euro nominal effective exchange rate are largely exogenous for individual ea countries once we control for ea aggregates we find that a real appreciation creates a trade off between expenditure switching contractionary and terms of trade expansionary effects with the latter prevailing in most countries we also find some heterogeneity in the way movements in the euro exchange rate are transmitted within the ea in particular between core and peripheral countries although differences are mostly not statistically significant

the subjective and objective evaluation of incentive stock options owners of incentive options invariably hold undiversified portfolios this paper derives a model for the subjective and objective values of such options the subjective value the value to the holder is less than the market value because the option is held in an undiversified portfolio and because it is exercised suboptimally from the market perspective the objective value is the cost to the firm of issuing the option and lies between the market and subjective values this value recognizes the suboptimal exercise but not the undiversified discount the model which is the black scholes model with modified parameters is simple to use

backdating executive stock options an ex ante valuation abstract when backdating executive stock options esos the exercise price is set in favor of the recipient executive relative to a non backdated benchmark we find an ex ante upper bound for the cost of backdating to shrink from 10 to about 3 7 as a consequence of the regime change represented by the sarbanes oxley act sox we frame the backdating behavior as a compound exotic option considering both simple and extended models of the underlying eso in the latter case we draw on the analytical eso models of sircar and xiong 2007 post sox we use a longstaff schwartz inspired least squares monte carlo approach

devaluations and aggregate output fluctuations a random coefficient regression model for mexico the goal of this paper is to investigate whether nominal devaluations had real output growth effects in mexico and if so to assess the significance and duration of such effects a random coefficient regression model to evaluate the output growth effects of 1976 1982 and 1986 devaluations using sectoral data from 1970 to 1991 is specified and estimated the results indicate unambiguous short term contractionary effects of devaluations on non agricultural output in mexico in addition it is found that adjustments to imbalances in the external sector invariably came from temporary contractions in the aggregate output rather than significant resource reallocation from the non tradable sector towards the tradable sector several transmission mechanisms that relate nominal exchange rate movements to real output fluctuations are also considered

assessing the competitiveness of demand side bidding demand side bidding dsb provides a very flexible way of meeting the peak load in a production schedule this paper demonstrates that in a competitive electricity pool dsb and other forms of flexible generation can cause sharp and unwarranted price increases if the production schedule is established on the basis of a minimization of the total production cost furthermore the competitiveness of dsb is artificially inflated if the load recovery periods which accompany these load reductions are not taken into consideration by the scheduling program it is argued that the actual value of dsb should be re examined in the light of these findings

a general framework for evaluating executive stock options abstract motivated by recent recommendations by both european and american accounting standards boards that executive stock options be expensed in firms statements we provide an analytical and flexible framework for their evaluation our approach takes into account the vesting period american style resetting and reloading provisions that are features of many option programs and also considers the trading restriction on executives we identify a recursive structure in the stream of options that are granted to the executive over the course of her employment by exploiting this we are able to obtain a near explicit formula for the option value this enables us to discuss the joint effects of the different features on the exercising strategies and firms granting cost especially we highlight some significant interactions among these features

contractionary devaluation in the southern cone the case of chile abstract this paper discusses the effects of a currency devaluation on output employment and the trade balance in a small open economy chile the structure of the foreign trade sector in terms of price elasticities the sectoral differences in relative domestic value added intensities across exports and import competing industries and the degree of wage indexation are the main determinants in our model of the impact of devaluation a simulation carried out with a computable macro model for chile shows a currency devaluation to be contractionary in the short to medium run

analysing disequilibrium exchange rate systems in developing countries abstract many developing economies have imposed quantitative restrictions on their international trade and tight control on capital movements disequilibrium balance of payments models developed to capture this restrictive trade regime demonstrate that the effects of a devaluation from an initial situation of disequilibrium with rationing can differ substantially from those predicted by traditional balance of payments models recent extensions to such models show that the effects of any policy measures depend critically on the initial disequilibrium conditions attempts at liberalizing trade and payments regimes have stimulated further analysis on the process of opening up a developing economy this work highlights the interaction between balance of payments current and capital accounts

a dynamic model of the open economy with sluggish output this paper incorporates sluggish output adjustment in a model simil ar to r dornbusch 1976 and explicitly considers the cases in which a real depreciation of the exchange rate is expansionary and contractionary it is shown that the exchange rate is likely to portray overshooting g in both cases when the real depreciation is expansionary the mode l generates comovements in prices and output that are opposite to those presente d by dornbusch in the contractionary depreciation case there is a unique stable equilibrium path and the economy is likely to experienc e cycles in output and the real exchange rate copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

a simple macro model for a small open economy facing a binding external constraint chile abstract in this paper a keynesian macroeconomic model for a small open economy is used which describes the functioning of the real part of the economy in the short run when facing a dominant external restriction the main conclusions of this paper are 1 in the chilean case a devaluation has a contractionary impact in the short run i e a 10 real devaluation produces a 3 4 drop on the level of output the non fulfilment of the marshall lerner condition accounts for only 30 of the output contraction while the remaining 70 corresponds to the decline in consumption that is induced by the reduction in real wages 2 when the economy has an external deficit the adequate combination of exchange and fiscal policies to restore the balance of payments equilibrium which minimizes the decline of output depends on the magnitude of the devaluation thus an over shooting in the exchange rate together with a contractionary fiscal policy would produce an unnecessarily deflationary impact in the short run 3 the chilean empirical evidence shows that when there is a dominant external constraint the magnitude of the short run trade off between real wages and employment is not very acute the short run elasticity of employment with respect to the real wage is 0 34

is devaluation expansionary or contractionary empirical evidence from fiji devaluation has been traditionally promoted as an effective tool for increasing exports and improving the external position of the devaluing country if a nominal devaluation results in expenditure switching in this article our aim is to model the relationship between currency devaluations and output for fiji following the approach in bahmani et al 2002 we extend the traditional model by incorporating other monetary and fiscal policy variables we achieve our goal by using the recently developed bounds testing approach to cointegration and the autoregressive distributed lag model and find that devaluation is expansionary in the case of fiji

paper millionaires how valuable is stock to a stockholder who is restricted from selling it abstract many firms have stockholders who face severe restrictions on their ability to sell their shares and diversify the risk of their personal wealth we study the costs of these liquidity restrictions on stockholders using a continuous time portfolio choice framework these restrictions have major effects on the optimal investment and consumption strategies because of the need to hedge the illiquid stock position and smooth consumption in anticipation of the eventual lapse of the restrictions these results provide a number of important insights about the effects of illiquidity in financial markets

the antecedents and aftermath of financial crises as told by carlos f diaz alejandro some of the best known papers of carlos f diaz alejandro were about latin america s crises in the 1980s and 1930s i show data figures and evidence about the crises in the advanced economies thirty years later that fit the same narrative his unadulterated words aptly describe modern problems across geographical borders and in this case income levels this attests to his timeless insight and understanding because some of the observations he made have general applicability to the study of recurring patterns across crises i have taken the liberty to label these lessons these are primarily lessons about what to avoid

on the relationship between the value of the mark and german production this study employs johansen s cointegration technique to determine the long run relationship between exchange value of the dm and german production it is shown that depreciation of the dm has a long run expansionary impact on german production this conclusion is based on a new method of selecting the order of var and the appropriate cointegrating vector simultaneously

output effects of devaluation evidence from asia we study the effect of devaluation on output in six developing countries of asia in an empirical model that includes monetary fiscal and external variables we examine the impact of devaluation as the effect of real exchange depreciation and alternatively as the effect of nominal devaluation and changes in the foreign to domestic price ratio we find that with few exceptions a devaluation fails to make any effect on output over any length of time short run intermediate run or long run whatever effect on output we are able to uncover comes from the relative price level the ratio of foreign to domestic prices but not from nominal devaluation

prospect theory liquidation and the disposition effect there is a well known intuition linking prospect theory with the disposition effect the tendency of investors to sell assets that have risen in value rather than fallen recently several authors have studied rigorous models in an attempt to formalize the intuition however some have found it difficult to predict a disposition effect while others produce a more extreme prediction where investors never voluntarily sell at a loss we solve a model of asset liquidation where investors realize utility over gains and losses and utility is concave over gains and convex over losses under the preferences of tversky and kahneman tversky a d kahneman 1992 advances in prospect theory cumulative representation of uncertainty j risk uncertainty5 4 297 323 and lognormal asset prices investors exhibit a disposition effect as gains are realized at a greater rate than losses nonetheless in contrast to the extant literature we find that the investor will give up and sell at a loss when the asset has a sufficiently low sharpe ratio this paper was accepted by brad barber teck ho and terrance odean special issue editors

optimal exercise of executive stock options and implications for firm cost this paper conducts a comprehensive study of the optimal exercise policy for an executive stock option and its implications for option cost average life and alternative valuation concepts the paper is the first to provide analytical results for an executive with general concave utility wealthier or less risk averse executives exercise later and create greater option cost however option cost can decline with volatility we show when there exists a single exercise boundary yet demonstrate the possibility of a split continuation region we also show that for constant relative risk averse utility the option value does not converge to the black and scholes value as the correlation between the stock and the market portfolio converges to one we compare our model s option cost with the modified black and scholes approximation typically used in practice and show that the approximation error can be large or small positive or negative depending on firm characteristics

valuing executive stock options with endogenous departure abstract executive stock options differ from exchange traded options because of vesting and portability restrictions executive departure from the firm forces early exercise reducing the value of executive options current methodology calculates the option value by multiplying the black scholes option price by the departure probability this ignores the possibility that executive departure is less likely when stock price is high and thus is correlated with the stock price we show that this correlation implies a substantial increase in option values a similar situation occurs in performance based option packages where the actual number of options granted depends on stock performance

risk aversion indivisible timing options and gambling in this paper we model the behavior of a risk averse agent who seeks to maximize expected utility and who has an indivisible asset and a timing option over when to sell this asset our main contribution is to show that contrary to intuition optimal behavior for such a risk averse agent can include risk increasing gambles for example a manager with a choice over when to disinvest from a project a private homeowner with a property to sell or an employee with a grant of american style stock options may be better off taking positions in other assets with zero sharpe ratio that are uncorrelated with the underlying project house or stock price risk the results have wider implications for the modeling and interpretation of portfolio optimization problems involving american style timing decisions

coherence and the credibility of convertibility announcements abstract the recent devaluation crisis in mexico and its tequila effect elsewhere illustrate that two credibility problems associated with convertibility policies currency boards are announcements that violate truth telling and a non zero probability of policy failure we derive the trade off between these problems when announcements resemble cheap talk the strategic uncertainty created by this trade off implies that both the government and investors should recognize the presence of fed watchers who exploit any policy inconsistency for their own gain in this context credibility can be restored if the policy is coherent if it eliminates the marginal benefits for fed watching jel e63 e58 f40 1997 published by elsevier science ltd

nontraded asset valuation with portfolio constraints a binomial approach we provide a simple binomial framework to value american style derivatives subject to trading restrictions the optimal investment of liquid wealth is solved simultaneously with the early exercise decision of the nontraded derivative noshort sales constraints on the underlying asset manifest themselves in the form of an implicit dividend yield in the risk neutralized process for the underlying asset one consequence is that american call options may be optimally exercised prior to maturity even when the underlying asset pays no dividends applications to executive stock options eso are presented it is shown that the value of an eso could be substantially lower than that computed using the black scholes model we also analyze nontraded payoffs based on a price that is imperfectly correlated with the price of a traded asset the economics of asset pricing when one or more of the assets in the opportunity set are either subject to trading restrictions or entirely nontraded is a matter of great interest viewed from a practical perspective we have several important examples of such assets that are subject to trading restrictions pensions which represent perhaps the most significant of assets held by individual households are subject to trading restrictions it is typically the case that assets in pensions are not available for immediate consumption borrowing against pension assets is subject to significant direct and indirect costs by way of taxes and early withdrawal penalties human capital is another example housing investment is also illiquid and subject to significant transaction costs together pensions human capital and housing constitute a substantial part of a typical household s assets the significance of such nontraded assets for risk premia has already been noted by bewley 1982 there are other circumstances where lack of unrestricted trading plays an important role executive compensation plans usually take the this article was presented at boston university we would like to thank the editor bernard dumas and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments we also thank nalin kulatilaka and seminar participants for useful suggestions ganlin chang fei guan and carlton osakwe provided valuable research assistance j detemple acknowledges support from the social sciences and humanities research

towards full integration of demand side resources in joint forward energy reserve electricity markets this paper proposes a security constrained forward market clearing algorithm within which the inherent characteristics of demand flexibility are acknowledged when the provision of reserve from the demand side is considered in the proposed formulation we co optimize the cost of scheduling the appropriate resources to guarantee the security of the system and the expected cost of operating under any credible system state in addition we consider that consumers can offer to provide spinning reserve capacity deployable by voluntary load reductions in response to contingencies due to the load recovery effect i e since energy usage is essentially postponed when demand side reserve is deployed in post contingency states any voluntary reduction in the load has to be accompanied by a subsequent increase in demand from the initial forecast we demonstrate that the marginal value of the reserve provided by the demand can only be calculated taking into account the cost of supplying the recovery consumption flexible consumers can reduce their payments on average if energy is settled through real time prices

market valuation of employee stock options this study investigates whether investors incorporate the value of a firm s outstanding employee stock options into its stock price i estimate the outstanding options value for a sample of firms for which outstanding fixed options exceed 5 of outstanding common shares in 1988 i find a negative correlation between the value of outstanding options and a firm s share price the correlation is stronger i for the option s intrinsic value than for the option s time value ii for options that are later in their vesting stage than earlier in their vesting stage and iii for large firms than for small firms in addition the fasb s method for calculating compensation expense has no explanatory power in the presence of this paper s calculation of the options value

household heterogeneity and the transmission of foreign shocks abstract we study the role of heterogeneity in the transmission of foreign shocks we build a heterogeneous agent new keynesian small open model economy hanksome that experiences a current account reversal households portfolio composition and the extent of foreign currency borrowing are key determinants of the magnitude of the contraction in consumption associated with a sudden stop in capital inflows the contraction is more severe when households are leveraged and owe debt in foreign currency in this setting the revaluation of foreign debt causes a larger contraction in aggregate consumption when debt and leverage are concentrated among poorer households closing the output gap via an exchange rate devaluation may therefore be detrimental to household welfare due to the heterogeneous impact of the foreign debt revaluation our hanksome framework can rationalize the observed fear of floating in emerging market economies even in the absence of contractionary devaluations

industrial policy and exchange rate scepticism the aim of the present paper is to put in historical perspective the development thinking on the relationship between industrial and exchange rate policies the first section focuses on the thought of the so called pioneers of development economics specifically their preference for protectionism and their belated recognition that an exchange rate policy could act as a substitute to it in the second one we analyze the exchange rate skepticism that arises out of the theories that identify a foreign constraint to growth in addition to the one revealed by the pioneers the third section briefly complements the previous discussion with reference to macroeconomic formulations that allow for short run contractionary effects of a devaluation reinforcing the skepticism in question in the fourth section we discuss the revival of development thinking in the 1980s and its discussion about east asian trajectories a literature that placed great emphasis on industrial policy finally in the fifth section we discuss the new historical facts and the new development macroeconomics models that are putting an end to exchange rate skepticism

the rmb debate empirical analysis on the effects of exchange rate shocks in china and japan for a better understanding of the ongoing debates on the rmb this paper investigates the effects of exchange rate shocks on output and the current account for china and japan we use structural vector auto regression models and find that yen appreciation reduces current account surpluses while having no strong effect on output in japan rmb appreciation on the other hand has an insignificant effect on the current account although it tends to reduce output in china for china dollar pricing with vertical trade integration seems responsible for the insignificant effect on the current account

the exercise and valuation of executive stock options abstract in theory hedging restrictions faced by managers make executive stock options more difficult to value than ordinary options because they imply that exercise policies of managers depend on their preferences and endowments using data on option exercises from 40 firms this paper shows that a simple extension of the ordinary american option model which introduces random exogenous exercise and forfeiture predicts actual exercise times and payoffs just as well as an elaborate utility maximizing model that explicitly accounts for the nontransferability of options the simpler model could therefore be more useful than the preference based model for valuing executive options in practice

stocking up executive optimism option exercise and share retention abstract we show that an executive is optimistic about her company s prospects if and only if she retains some of the shares received whenever she exercises company stock options empirically an indicator of optimism based on this idea matches the expected relations between optimism and corporate decision making better than commonly used indicators based on the timing of option exercise this makes sense as our model of an executive s optimal option exercise and portfolio choice demonstrates that the timing of option exercise depends just as much on stock and other executive characteristics as it does on optimism

modelling real exchange rate effects on output performance in latin america this article empirically analyses real per capita gdp growth for six latin american countries argentina brazil chile columbia mexico venezuela in terms of real exchange rate depreciations inflation and us interest rates focussing on the role of the real exchange rate we find evidence of nonlinearity in this relationship which we capture through a smooth transition regression model with the exception of mexico nonlinearity in economic growth is associated with changes in the real exchange rate with depreciations leading to different relationships compared with appreciations regimes for mexico are associated with the past growth rates with effectively symmetric effects of real exchange rate changes although our results are in accord with other recent literature in that depreciations may have negative effects for growth the asymmetries we uncover indicate that these effects depend on the conditioning state

unemployment and the real exchange rate in latin america summary today unemployment rates in several latin american countries are similar or even higher than the highest unemployment rates among oecd economies open unemployment has become for the first time in the region s history a major dimension of the employment problem this paper examines the role of the real exchange rate rer in the recent unemployment performance of latin america it presents a model of the determinants of unemployment the channels through which the rer influences unemployment performance as well as the stylized facts and empirical results about this relationship giving special attention to the cases of argentina brazil chile and mexico 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

trade regimes and wages abstract we examine the impact of restrictive trade regimes on wages in the manufacturing sector a simple three sector economic model predicts that wages will fall in response to trade regime restrictiveness empirical tests are based on data for 37 countries over time our measure of trade regime restrictiveness is the black market premium on u s dollars the results strongly suggest that restrictive trade regimes reduce wages consistent with our theoretical analysis

assessment and simulation of the responsive demand potential in end user facilities application to a university customer many problems have appeared with the practical implementation of restructured electrical business in the u s and european union such as lack of generation network constraints etc a good example of these problems is the scarce participation of the demand in the electricity markets energy reserve and other ancillary services problems that could be solved through new demand responsive programs aimed to replace the traditional demand side management programs into voluntary demand participation programs a methodology for the generation of demand side bids and offers in large customer facilities and a real application to a university customer is presented in this paper the methodology is based on the knowledge of the physical processes involved in the electricity consumption and on the flexibility of the required supply the result of the methodology proposed is a set of demand packages that can be used to participate in different electricity markets whose possibilities in the market arena will be explored in a consequent paper

heterodox theory and policy the plan austral in argentina abstract this paper analyses the initial argentine macroeconomic conditions to which the plan austral responded and then examines the three essential components of the plan a price freeze fiscal adjustment and monetary reform it concludes with an evaluation of the achievements of the austral plan

international prices wages and inflation in the open economy a chilean model this paper presents a macroeconomic model to explain the dynamics of chilean inflation during 1976 82 the model extends the australian and scandinavian open economy models by making a finer distinction between tradables and nontradables and by introducing more elaborate expectations formation results of the model supplied to quarterly chilean data over the period reject the homogeneity of the system indicating that a devaluation does indeed affect the relative price between tradables and nontradables in the chilean context the results cast doubt on the stabilization policies pursued during the period 1979 82 which implicitly relied upon a model in which full homogeneity obtains

optimal planning to include storage devices in power systems it is difficult to forecast renewable energy resources due to their variability high uncertainty of the resources increases the concern about the reliable operation of the electric power system storage devices have been considered a candidate to control variable energy resources and most studies on storage devices are performed in the economic dispatch therefore electric power adequacy may be an issue in this paper a new approach in the optimal power flow framework is proposed for deploying storage devices and the feasibility and economic impact analyses are discussed

on the optimality of resetting executive stock options the practice of resetting strike prices on underwater executive stock options has drawn criticism for weakening managerial incentives our model shows that although the anticipation of resetting can negatively affect initial incentives resetting can still be an important value enhancing aspect of compensation contracts even from an ex ante standpoint in fact we find that some resetting is almost always optimal the relative advantages of resetting diminish with greater ability of managers to influence the resetting process greater relative importance of external factors on stock performance and lower costs of replacing incumbent managers

are devaluations contractionary in mena countries currency depreciation reduces aggregate supply by raising cost of imported inputs and increases aggregate demand by increasing its net export component depending on the relative strength of the two effects depreciation could be expansionary or contractionary we employ the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error correction modelling to evaluate the effects of exchange rate depreciation on output growth both in the short and in the long run across a sample of mena countries exchange rate fluctuations are found to be important to fluctuations in real output growth in the short run anticipated exchange rate depreciation may induce long run expansionary or contractionary effects on output supply consistent with theory s predictions the expansionary effect of unanticipated depreciation is only transitory on output growth nonetheless unanticipated depreciation is found to have a contractionary effect on output growth in the long run via an increase in the cost of imported inputs

employee stock option exercises an empirical analysis this paper describes the exercise behavior of over 50 000 employees who hold longterm options on employer stock at eight corporations employees typically exercise options years before expiration commonly sacrificing half of the black scholes value exercise is strongly associated with recent stock price movements the market to strike ratio proximity to vesting dates time to maturity volatility and the employee s level within the company these findings have implications for compensation planners the fasb as it develops a new accounting standard for options and financial statement users and preparers who apply and interpret the new fasb standard

debt crisis adjustment policies and capital formation in developing countries where do we stand abstract this paper documents the decline in investment rates observed in developing countries after 1982 and explores analytically and empirically the factors contributing to explain it the paper focuses on the impact of macroeconomic adjustment and reform measures on private investment particularly in latin america and east asia and underscores the importance of macroeconomic uncertainty policy credibility and potential coordination failures in shaping the response of investment to the changes in economic incentives brought about by structural reforms the analysis concludes with some policy recommendations to improve the design of sustainable growth oriented adjustment programs

does devaluation improve the current account this paper incorporates the link between devaluation foreign interest payments and the current acccount into a fairly general macroeconomic model in which exchange rate changes influence aggregate demand through exports imports and expenditures as well as aggregate supply via the cost of imported factors of production on the basis of avaliable statistical estimates of the behavioral and structural parameters of the model an attempt is mafe to assess the empirical importance of this link among others in a group of highly indebted industrial and developing countries by and large the empirical results indicate that high foreign debt and interest payments tend to reduce the short to medium run effect of devaluation on national income expecially in the ldcs but make little difference to its generally positive effect on the current account

non transferable non hedgeable executive stock option pricing abstract to value non transferable non hedgeable ntnh contingent claims and price executive stock options esos we use a replication argument to translate portfolios with ntnh derivatives into portfolios of primary assets only with stochastic portfolio constraints by identifying stochastic discount factors and finding subjective prices of ntnh european and american esos for block and continuous partial exercise we derive executives optimal exercise policies and use these to find objective prices costs of esos to firms through numerical simulations we obtain policy implications regarding esos incentivizing efficiency for the first time we demonstrate that unlike under block exercise subjective prices under continuous partial exercise may be higher than objective ones moreover volatility regimes and executives other wealth are important in eso pricing and are thus essential to empirical executive compensation studies

risk aversion and block exercise of executive stock options abstract it is well documented that executives granted stock options tend to exercise early and in a few large transactions or blocks standard risk neutral valuation models cannot explain these patterns and attempts to capture the exercise behavior of risk averse executives have been limited to the special case of one option this paper solves for the optimal exercise behavior for a risk averse executive who is granted multiple stock options we show that utility based models do not predict block exercise behavior rather the risk averse executive exercises stock options individually at a sequence of increasing price thresholds when in addition the executive faces frictions such as costly exercise he faces a trade off between exercising little and often to maximize return and exercising larger quantities on fewer occasions to minimize effort this generates realistic block exercise behavior and yields new predictions in particular executives should begin by exercising large blocks of options but the block sizes should become smaller over time our framework also allows us to study the impact of multiple exercise dates on estimates of the cost of options to the company we find that assuming the executive can only exercise on a single occasion underestimates the cost of the options compared with allowing for optimal exercise behavior

how does real exchange rate influence income inequality between urban and rural areas in china abstract the channels through which the real exchange rate influences urban rural per capita real income inequality are analyzed using yearly data for 28 chinese provinces due to the higher share of tradable goods produced in urban than rural areas the real depreciation of the chinese currency raised the urban bias contrary to the effect usually expected this rise was however mitigated because of the impact of the exchange rate on the urban rural consumer price ratio real public wages and the ratio of industrial agricultural protection rates it disappeared for coastal provinces due to the strong development of outward oriented rural industrial activities

does devaluation cause stagflation the traditional view that devaluation tends to increase domestic real income and output has been challenged in recent years on the grounds that trade flows including factor imports are relatively insensitive to exchange rate changes especially in developing countries this paper presents a simple macro economic model in which devaluation influences real income and output both through the cost of imported inputs on the supply side of the economy and through exports imports and expenditures on the demand side statistical estimates of the structural parameters of the model for a group of ten industrial and developing countries are used to show that the demand effects dominate the cost effects in most cases thus supporting the traditional view that devaluation has positive real effects in these countries in the short to medium run est ce que la devaluation engendre la stagflation le point de vue conventionnel veut que la devaluation tende a accroitre le niveau du revenu et de la production domestiques c est un point de vue qui a ete remis en question ces dernieres annees parce que dit on les flux de commerce international y compris les flux d importation de facteurs de production semblent relativement insensibles aux changements dans le taux de change ce memoire developpe un modele macro economique simple dans lequel la devaluation influence le niveau de revenu et de production en termes reels via le co ut des facteurs de production importes du cote de l offre et via les exportations les importations et les niveaux de depenses du c6te de la demande les auteurs utilisent la calibration statistique des parametres structurels du modele pour un groupe de dix pays industrialises et en voie de developpement pour montrer que les effets du cot6 de la demande dominent les effets de cofuts dans la plupart des cas voila qui supporte le point de vue traditionnel qui veut que la devaluation ait un impact positif reel dans les pays devaluateurs a court et a moyen tenne

exchange rate management and stabilization policies in developing countries abstract we outline three channels via which a devaluation has a direct contractionaly impact on the aggregate supply side of the economy local currency costs of intermediate imports wage indexing in the presence of food imports and reduced volume of real credit to firms contractionary effects via the supply side are more damaging than krugman taylor effects via aggregate demand since a cut in aggregate supply leads to upward pressure on inflation while a cut in aggregate demand tends to abate inflation upward pressure on inflation may over time threaten the increase in competitiveness a nominal devaluation also intends to achieve we also discuss the implications of a substantial foreign debt we demonstrate that a successful devaluation raises the real in terms of domestic goods debt service burden causing a krugman taylor like contractionary effect on aggregate demand we then analyse the effects of a preannounced slowdown of the rate of depreciation our results of course do not imply that a devaluation should never be considered they do suggest however that a devaluation is likely to be an ineffective tool for demand management since it may cut aggregate supply as much or more in the short run

influence of price responsive demand shifting bidding on congestion and lmp in pool based day ahead electricity markets this paper investigates the influence of price responsive demand shifting bidding on congestion and locational marginal prices in pool based day ahead electricity markets the market dispatch problem of the pool based day ahead electricity market is formulated as to maximize the social welfare of market participants subject to operational constraints given by real and reactive power balance equations and security constraints in the form of apparent power flow limits over the congested lines the social welfare objective function of the day ahead market dispatch problem maximizes the benefit of distribution companies and other bulk consumers based on their price responsive demand shifting bids and minimizes the real and reactive power generation cost of generation companies the price responsive demand shifting bidding mechanism which has been recently introduced in the literature is able to shift the price responsive demand from the periods of high price to the periods of low price in day ahead electricity markets the comparisons of the price responsive demand shifting bids with conventional price responsive and price taking bids are presented by solving hourly market dispatch problems on five bus ieee 30 bus realistic up 75 bus indian and ieee 118 bus systems for 24 h scheduling period it has been demonstrated that the proposed approach leads to reduction in congestion and locational marginal prices as compared to price responsive and price taking bids and meets the energy consumption targets of distribution companies bulk consumers

an empirical assessment of currency devaluation in east asian countries the hypothesis of contractionary devaluation has received surprisingly strong empirical support especially in the context of latin american countries in this paper we study whether it applies equally well in seven east asian countries when we use the pre 1997 crisis data and the trade weighted exchange rate we find no evidence of contractionary devaluations in fact currency devaluation appears strongly expansionary in several countries this is contrasted to the case of chile and mexico where the evidence of devaluation is persistent we find that the results are somewhat sensitive to the definition of the exchange rate and the period of estimation

an optimal multiple stopping approach to infrastructure investment decisions abstract the energy and material processing industries are traditionally characterized by very large scale physical capital that is custom built with long lead times and long lifetimes however recent technological advancement in low cost automation has made possible the parallel operation of large numbers of small scale and modular production units amenable to mass production these units can be more rapidly deployed but they are also likely to have a much quicker turnover such a paradigm shift motivates the analysis of the combined effect of lead time and lifetime on infrastructure investment decisions in order to value the underlying real option we introduce an optimal multiple stopping approach that accounts for operational flexibility delay induced by lead time and multiple finite infinite future investment opportunities we provide an analytical characterization of the firm s value function and optimal stopping rule this leads us to develop an iterative numerical scheme and examine how the investment decisions depend on lead time and lifetime as well as other parameters furthermore our model can be used to analyze the critical investment cost that makes small scale short lead time short lifetime alternatives competitive with traditional large scale infrastructure