testing the unbiasedness hypothesis in the forward foreign exchange market a specification analysis abstract this paper evaluates two popular regression methods of testing the unbiasedness hypothesis in the forward foreign exchange market for the 30 day canada united states forward foreign exchange market the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that it is inappropriate to treat the structure of the systematic and stochastic components of the test relations as constant over time hence conclusions inferred from parameter significance testing based upon full sample estimation can be very misleading accordingly we argue for a specification analysis of the test relations and more explicit modelling of market fundamentals

dynamic allocations for currency futures under switching regimes signals abstract over the last decades speculative investors in the fx market have profited in the well known currency carry trade strategy ct however during currencies or global financial crashes ct produces substantial losses in this work we present a methodology that enhances ct performance significantly for our final strategy constructed backtests show that the mean semivolatility ratio can be more than doubled with respect to benchmark ct to do the latter we first identify and classify ct returns according to their behavior in different regimes using a hidden markov model hmm the model helps to determine when to open and close positions depending whether the regime is favorable to ct or not finally we employ a mean semivariance allocation model to improve allocations when positions are opened

the performance of nested logit models when welfare estimation is the goal in this paper we examine the performance of nested logit models in the face of two specification errors the first specification error arises when a nested logit model is appropriate but the wrong nesting structure is chosen the second specification error occurs when the underlying stochastic process is not consistent with nested logit particular attention is placed upon the impact that these errors can have on welfare predictions monte carlo experiments are used together with analytical results to examine the resulting bias to welfare estimates in addition we explore the value of alternative model selection criteria in choosing nesting structures

estimation of a u s dairy sector model by maximum simulated likelihood this paper estimates a multivariate tobit system of monthly wholesale dairy prices where four prices are lower censored by the dairy price support programme using maximum simulated likelihood msl the effects of simulation noise are tested corrected for and the relevance of estimating multivariate versus the single tobit equations discussed

the speculative efficiency hypothesis the hypothesis that forward prices are the best unbiased forecast of future spot prices is often presented in the economic and financial analysis of futures markets this paper considers the hypothesis independently of its implications for rational expectations or market efficiency and in order to stress this fact the term speculative efficiency is used to characterize the state envisaged under the hypothesis if a market is subject to efficient speculation the supply of speculative funds is infinitely elastic at the forward price that is equal to the expected future spot price the expected future spot price is a market price determined as the solution to the underlying rational expectations macroeconomic model although the paper is primarily concerned with testing this hypothesis in the foreign exchange market the methodology introduced in the paper is of general application to all futures markets this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the efficiency of the london metal exchange in this paper the three approaches available to test the hypothesis that the futures price is an unbiased predictor of future spot prices are utilized to analyze the efficiency of the london metal exchange for the period january 1975 december 1983 the first technique uses non overlapping observation and derives a test of this hypothesis using ols the second uses overlapping data and models explicitly the moving average process in the error structure using arma procedures the third uses a fiml technique to estimate a bivariate stochastic stationary process of the spot and futures prices and tests the unbiased predictor hypothesis in the form of complex non linear cross equation restrictions the results conform to the predictions of the unbiased predictor hypothesis regardless of the methodology and or data employed

us dairy policy alternatives under bovine somatotropin a dynamic optimal control model is constructed to study us dairy policy alternatives under bovine somatotropin bst the results indicate that the adoption of bst might be slower than that indicated by the early surveys even if adoption is widespread the government can have the potentially large milk surplus problems under control with a combination of price support generic milk advertising and a cow buy out with bst adoption the government would set lower support prices and would increase assesment for milk advertising compared with the no bst case the higher adoption rates the lower the support prices and the higher the advertising assesments it is found that bst adoption is socially beneficial consumers gain at the expense of producers the government can however help produces by giving a larger policy weight to producers in setting the optimal levels of policy variables finally it is found that the current levels of generic advertising are too low and the allocation of advertising bet

setting efficient incentives for agricultural research lessons from principal agent theory a conceptual analysis of important issues in the organization and management of academic research is presented principal agent theory is applied to derive optimal compensation schemes for scientists when they differ in ability risk aversion cost of effort and reservation utility and to show the optimal trade off between institutional risk and scientists abilities implications for an efficient organization of research are derived including how scientists incentives should be structured to elicit optimal research efforts and direction whether research direction should be centralized or decentralized and whether the organization of research should be through external competitive grantsor program and institutional funding copyright 2000 oxford university press

a satisfactory benefit cost indicator from contingent valuation abstract standard economic concepts are used to develop a model of individual behavior when subject to the constraints of the contingent valuation choice context the model yields refutable consequences that are consistent with previously reported empirical findings including some that have been thought to be anomalous the model is used to show that different contingent valuation formats have predictably different performance characteristics notably the hicksian compensating measures are satisfactory benefit cost indicators when elicited using any one of several formats identified in the text of the formats examined one form of a policy referendum appears to have the most satisfactory characteristics overall we conclude that contingent valuation is a progressing research program

heterogeneous preferences and aggregation in environmental policy analysis a landfill siting case in many studies of nonmarket resources economists have data to disaggregate results according to subpopulations within the full study population disaggregated results can increase the usefulness of economic analyses improve public confidence in the results and permit public officials to assess equity concerns we outline an approach to obtain disaggregated results when characteristics of individuals may identify distinct preferences the approach is applied to public preferences regarding landfill siting decisions the discussion explores the implications of disaggregated results for policy decisions for bias in aggregate willingness to pay estimates and for nonmarket research methodologies

economic principles and incentives structure management and funding of agricultural research in the united states the problems faced by public agricultural research and land grant system in the us is discussed in the context of its response to public pressure and criticism several proposals are put forward to address these problems which are related to the following issues grant funding versus formula funding breakdown of organized science in agriculture privatization of the land grant system harnessing the efficiencies of competition in public agricultural research and long term social productivity modelling

speculative efficiency and risk premium in the market for foreign exchange abstract i show that while the unbiasedness hypothesis does not hold for the deutsche mark u s dollar exchange rate market during the period 1979 1986 a risk premium cannot be detected either in light of this inconclusiveness regarding the true model specification of exchange rate movements the davidson and mackinnon approach of selecting models from amongst non nested models is used to show that a model with risk premium is closer to the true specification than a model that implies unbiasedness

rational expectations risk and efficiency in the london metal exchange an empirical analysis there now exists a number of studies which reject efficiency of the london metal exchange as a joint null hypothesis of rational expectations and risk neutrality in this paper we investigate the presence of time varying risk premia in a number of metal price series conditional on the assumption of rationality our findings include evidence to suggest that forward prices contain information on future spot prices over and above the information contained in current spot prices that there is some evidence of time varying premia in the forward prices for tin and zinc and that the behaviour of these premia are intuitively plausible in particular there appears to be significant covariation between risk premia and the expected spot price change

carry trade the gains of diversification market participants routinely take advantage of the failure of uncovered interest rate parity to speculate in currency markets perhaps the most widely used currency speculation strategy is the carry trade in this article we take the perspective of an individual currency trader and document the gains to diversifying the carry trade across different currencies we show that these gains are large diversification boosts the typical sharpe ratio by over 50

the carry trade and fundamentals nothing to fear but feer itself the carry trade is the investment strategy of going long in high yield target currencies and short in low yield funding currencies recently this nave trade has seen very high returns for long periods followed by large crash losses after large depreciations of the target currencies based on low sharpe ratios and negative skew these trades could appear unattractive even when diversied across many currencies but more sophisticated conditional trading strategies exhibit more favorable payos we apply novel within economics binary outcome classication tests to show that our directional trading forecasts are informa tive and out of sample loss function analysis to examine trading performance the critical conditioning variable we argue is the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate feer expected returns are lower all else equal when the target currency is overvalued like traders researchers should incorporate this information when evaluating trading strategies when we do so some questions are resolved negative skewness is purged and market volatility vix is uncorrelated with returns other puzzles remain the more sophisticated strategy has a very high sharpe ratio suggesting market ineciency

funding structure and management of public agricultural research in the united states hypotheses about state agricultural experiment stations are investigated formula funding is found more productive than competitive grant funding possibly owing to transactions costs of reviewing and misallocations of pork barrel funding heavier administrator involvement in problem choice is found to enhance productivity of applied research where approach and product can be well specified in advance but detracts from productivity of pretechnology research where response to individual incentives may lead to more timely adaptations stronger vertical integration of pretechnology applied sciences and extension activities is found to increase productivity suggesting the importance of strongly science based applied research and practical understanding of pretechnology sciences

the forward bias in the ecu peso risks vs fads and fashions abstract forward rates of european currencies against the private and official ecu exhibit a bias similar to the one found in other data the cumby obstfeld fama cof regression coefficients are systematically below unity and two thirds of them are negative we use the discount of the private ecu relative to the official ecu as a measure of market scepticism or mistrust in one view this sentiment is based on peso risk fears of realignments and possibly also the risk of a meltdown of the private ecu relative to the official one alternatively the discount just reflects fads and fashions dichotomizing the data on the basis of the size of the discount in the private ecu we find that the cof beta strongly depends on the degree of mistrust and that the negative cof coefficients are generated by typically less than 20 of the data but the pattern fits the fads and fashion view better than the peso theory if the sentiment factor contains a conventional risk premium at all then this risk premium is definitely not the one predicted by bansal bansal r 1997 an exploration of the forward premium puzzle in currency markets review of financial studies 10 369 403 nor is the sentiment factor proxying for huisman et al s huisman r koedijk k kool c nissen f 1998 extreme support for uncovered interest parity journal of international money and finance 17 211 228 transaction cost effects

combining mean reversion and momentum trading strategies in foreign exchange markets abstract the literature on equity markets documents the existence of mean reversion and momentum phenomena researchers in foreign exchange markets find that foreign exchange rates also display behaviors akin to momentum and mean reversion this paper implements a trading strategy combining mean reversion and momentum in foreign exchange markets the strategy was originally designed for equity markets but it also generates abnormal returns when applied to uncovered interest parity deviations for five countries i find that the pattern for the positions thus created in the foreign exchange markets is qualitatively similar to that found in the equity markets quantitatively this strategy performs better in foreign exchange markets than in equity markets also it outperforms traditional foreign exchange trading strategies such as carry trades and moving average rules

regulation in a dynamic market the u s dairy industry an econometric model of the u s dairy market is estimated for the period 1950 80 the economic costs of the dairy program for the period 1965 80 are calculated using ex ante ex post and long run demand and supply functions results indicate that the costs of the dairy program averaged from 430 to 590 million 1980dollars per year depending upon the choice of economic surplus measure the cost estimates depend only slightly on the year that the dairy program is assumed to have been terminated

using non linear methods to search for risk premia in currency futures abstract this paper uses currency futures prices to test the joint null hypotheses of rational expectations and absence of a time varying risk premium in the foreign exchange market we find no linear predictability in the logarithm of futures price changes either using its own past or past interest differentials also we establish that there is no non linear predictability in log price changes conditioning on its own past or past interest rate differentials thus if a time varying risk premium exists in currency futures market it is not related to its own past or past interest rate differentials

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

the impact of monetary regime changes some exchange rate evidence abstract lucas has argued that coefficient changes can be explained by changing expectations caused by the policy regime shifts this paper provides evidence consistent with the lucas critique using an efficient markets news framework kalman filter results show that surprise relative u s monetary expansion is associated both with periods of u s depreciation and appreciation i show that variables representing changes in monetary policy regimes can explain a substantial fraction of the movements in the time varying parameter

using choice experiments to value the environment this paper we outline the choice experiment approach to environmental valuation this approach has its roots in lancaster s characteristics theory of value in random utility theory and in experimental design we show how marginal values for the attributes of environmental assets such as forests and rivers can be estimated from pair wise choices as well as the value of the environmental asset as a whole these choice pairs are designed so as to allow efficient statistical estimation of the underlying utility function and to minimise required sample size choice experiments have important advantages over other environmental valuation methods such as contingent valuation and travel cost type models although many design issues remain unresolved applications to environmental issues have so far been relatively limited we illustrate the use of choice experiments with reference to a recent uk study on public preferences for alternative forest landscapes this study allows us to perform a convergent validity test on the choice experiment estimates of willingness to pay

an interregional analysis of price discrimination and domestic policy reform in the u s dairy sector the u s dairy sector has experienced several reforms in both government price support and classified pricing under state and federal milk marketing orders an interregional spatial market equilibrium model of the u s dairy sector is used to provide quantitative measures of the aggregate and regional impacts of alternative domestic deregulation scenarios the model simulates the allocation of farm milk used in the production of nine dairy products in a way consistent with milk component balances for milk fat protein and carbohydrate both within and across regions results suggest current policies induce substantive aggregate and regional distortions relative to an unregulated policy

flexible exchange rates prices and the role of news lessons from the 1970s recent experience with flexible exchange rate systems has led to renewed interest in the operation of foreign exchange markets as reflected in many recent studies of the principal determinants of exchange rates the 1970s witnessed the dramatic alteration of the international monetary system from a regime of pegged exchange rates which prevailed for about a quarter of a century since the bretton woods conference into a regime of flexible though managed rates as a consequence of the emergence of the new legal and economic system traders national governments and international organisations were confronted with new economic problems choices and instruments during the 1970s ex change rates fluctuated widely and inflation rates accelerated the international monetary system had to accommodate extraordinarily large oil related shocks which affected trade flows in goods and assets huge oil payments had to be recycled uncertainties concerning future developments in international politics reached new heights and the prospects for the world economy got gloomier these developments placed unprecedented pressures on the markets for foreign exchange as well as on other asset markets they were associated with a large slide in the value of the us dollar and resulted in speeding up the creation of new institutions like the european monetary system which provided the formal framework for the management of exchange rates among members

conditioning carry trades less risk more return abstract prior studies show that extreme interest rate differentials irds and high foreign exchange rate fx volatility have substantial explanatory power for the validity of uip we show that these contemporaneous drivers also have predictive power by implementing a conditional currency carry trade ct strategy that excludes regimes for which uip is likely to hold conditioning high fx volatility only or on both fx volatility and extreme irds outperforms the base case unconditional ct strategy in virtually any of the settings analyzed conditioning on very large irds only shows mixed findings our strategy works best for smaller ct portfolios

a test for speculative bubbles in the sterling dollar exchange rate 1981 84 the u s dollar price of the u k pound sterling is tested for a speculative bubble defined as a period with a nonzero median in excessreturns a nonparametric procedure is developed which controls for data mining over the period of flexible exchange rates and finds a negative bubble in the excess return to holding sterling rather than dollar assets during the period 1981 84 possible interpretations arebootstrap equilibria rational bubbles nonsym metric fundamentals and nonrational expectations copyright 1986 by american economic association

assessing public priorities for experiment station research contingent value and public preferences for agricultural research laws concerning government accountability mandate that agencies weigh constituent interests in setting priorities this study extends literature on the value of research by considering the public s stated preferences for scientist effort allocated across an agricultural experiment station s research portfolio over 75 of respondents expressed a willingness to pay exceeding 20 per household for allocations of at least 139 scientist months the mean household is willing to pay about 25 for a 25 increase in effort marginal analysis identifies topic areas where an additional scientist month provides above or below average benefits the distribution of effort across research topics significantly affects respondents values

an analysis of 1980s dairy programs and some policy implications excessive government purchases of dairy surpluses during the early 1980s prompted three corrective measures the milk diversion program dairy termination program and lower support prices an eight equation econometric model of the dairy sector simulates these programs and shows them to be incomplete or impermanent in their effects however further analysis shows that a more aggressive policy of lower support prices would be effective in reducing costs to government and consumers and lowering transfers to producers

risk premia carry trade dynamics and economic value of currency speculation in this paper we derive the dynamics and assess the economic value of currency speculation by formalizing the concept of a trader inaction range we show that exchange rate returns comprise a time varying risk premium and that uncovered interest parity uip holds in a speculative sense the often cited forward bias puzzle originates from the omission of the risk premium in standard uip tests consistent with its popularity among market professionals the carry trade strategy can be rationalized as it systematically collects risk premia and generates economic value when applied in multi currency portfolios

an analysis of intertemporal pricing for forward foreign exchange contracts an asset pricing model with an unobservable time varying risk premium is used to price forward foreign exchange contracts specifically the term spectrum of forward foreign exchange contracts is examined in order to focus on country specific and maturityspecific information the testable restrictions imposed by the model are consistent with both cross country and cross maturity forward contracts except at the short end of the maturity spectrum for cross country forward exchange rates this indicates that the intertemporal model is relatively robust in valuing forward contracts of different maturities and for different exchange rates but that it may fail when there are significant short term country specific shocks theoretical and empirical studies have demonstrated that the forward exchange rate incorporates a time varying risk premium in addition to an expected future spot exchange rate recent works by fama 9 and hodrick and srivastava 21 reveal the importance of the risk premium by showing that the variability in risk premiums exceeds the variability in expected change in spot exchange rates these results are very general in that they are based on the definition that equates the forward exchange rate to the expected future spot exchange rate and a risk premium term a logical but more demanding next step is to model and conduct specification tests of the risk premium itself the purpose of this paper is to use an intertemporal latent variable assetpricing model ilvm to examine the risk return characteristics of the term structure of forward foreign exchange contracts more specifically the ilvm is used to price various bilateral dollar forward exchange contracts for each maturity as well as the different maturities for each bilateral forward exchange contract the ilvm was first utilized by hansen and hodrick 16 and hodrick and srivastava 20 to examine forward exchange risk premiums the two studies are however confined to just one month forward exchange contracts in addition the studies yield conflicting results the application of the ilvm to other

a comparison of stated preference methods for environmental valuation this paper presents an empirical comparison of contingent valuation cvm and choice experiments which are used to value environmental quality changes both of these methods require individuals to state their preferences for environmental qualities however choice experiments differ from cvm in that environmental attributes are varied in an experimental design which requires respondents to make repeated choices between bundles of attributes the empirical application involved the effect of environmental quality changes arising from forest management practices on recreational moose hunting values significant differences were found between the values derived from the two methods however detailed examination of the implied choice behaviour suggested that respondents ignored substitute recreation areas in the cvm question restricting the choice experiment model to consider only the one site where quality was varied resulted in welfare estimates similar to the cvm model this highlights the importance of substitutes in environmental valuation and suggests that choice experiments may be more appropriate than cvm in some cases