how to combine long and short return histories efficiently a common challenge in portfolio risk analysis is that certain assets have shorter return histories than others unfortunately many standard portfolio risk analysis techniques including historical tail risk measurement regime dependent risk analysis and bootstrapping simulations require full return histories for all assets or risk factors the author presents easy instructions on how to efficiently combine data for investments whose histories differ in length and offers a new model to better account for non normal distributions

a mixed oligopoly in the presence of foreign private firms in this paper a mixed oligopoly model is considered in which a state owned public firm competes with both domestic and foreign private firms previous articles on mixed oligopoly did not include foreign private firms the effect on the equilibrium involves a lower price and a different allocation of production relative to the case when all private firms are domestically owned in addition issues such as the effects of an open door policy allowing foreign firms to enter and the effects of foreign acquisition of domestic firms are discussed

effects of indirect taxation in a mixed oligopoly abstract in a mixed oligopoly an increase in tax ad valorem or specific does not change total output but increases the output of the public firm and the tax revenue also privatization may increase both tax revenue and welfare

nonrenewable resource scarcity nonrenewable resource theory often is summarized by hotelling s rule this paper reviews theoretical extensions and empirical investigations of resource extraction models observed data are often inconsistent with the hotelling rule suggesting that other characteristics of nonrenewable resource supply including exploration heterogeneous ore quality technological progress and capital investment are important determinants of the dynamic behavior of resource prices given the persistent recurrence of concern about nonrenewable resource scarcity measures of nonrenewable resource scarcity and the empirical evidence for the time trends of those measures are reviewed finally the implications of nonrenewable resource scarcity for economic growth are examined

reform of the coal sector in an open economy the case of china cheap abundant and easy to transport and store coal has been produced and consumed to meet people s energy needs the last decade s growth in global coal use has been driven mainly by developing economies like china whose phenomenal economic growth has been powered by coal fired electricity and promoted by the export of manufactured goods a recent reform focus in china s coal sector is on coal taxation the paper develops a game theoretic model tailored to the context of china where coal taxation reform takes place against the background of privatisation of coal firms and an open economy it finds that the adoption of special coal taxes is optimal for social welfare under most circumstances but may induce coal firms to commit opportunistic behaviour in the process of privatisation the paper also cautions about potential resistance to the reform from consumers coal firms and government officials

inflation and asset returns in a monetary economy postwar u s data are characterized by negative correlations between real equity returns and inflation and by positive correlations between real equity returns and money growth these patterns are closely matched quantitatively by an equilibrium monetary asset pricing model the model also implies negative correlations between expected asset returns and expected inflation and it predicts that the inflationasset return correlation will be more strongly negative when inflation is generated by fluctuations in real economic activity than when it is generated by monetary fluctuations the co movements of real asset returns inflation and money growth have been studied extensively over the past fifteen years table i displays some of the statistical properties of these series using quarterly u s data from 1959 to 1990 note first the significantly negative correlation between real equity returns and inflation note also the negative correlation between inflation and the ex post real return to nominally riskless bonds while this fact is not particularly surprising numerous studies conclude that the correlations between ex ante real asset returns and expected inflation are also negative 2 in contrast to these patterns the correlation between money growth and real equity returns is weakly positive in the data while the correlation between money growth and the real bond return is virtually zero initially these empirical patterns were viewed as anomalies negative correlations between inflation and ex post real stock returns contradict the traditional view that equities ought to act as an inflation hedge 3 negative correlations between expected inflation and ex ante real returns violate the

toward a theory of regulation for developing countries following jean jacques laffont s lead the efficient operation and expansion of infrastructures in developing countries is crucial for growth and poverty reduction however recent reforms aimed at improving the performance of these sectors have had limited success evidence suggests that in many instances this was because the traditional regulatory theory relied on by policymakers was not suitable for the institutional context in developing countries this article surveys more recent theoretical work focusing on problems with regulation in these countries at the heart of the survey is the work of jean jacques laffont who in the last decade of his life set about developing a theoretical framework for regulation in developing countries we consider the implications of his work which focused on the key institutional limitations faced in developing countries we then discuss where experience suggests that there are important omissions from this modeling bringing in extensions and alternative approaches pursued by other authors we conclude by summarizing the key ways in which regulatory policy will be different when institutions are weak overall we find that an understanding of the institutional context and its implications are crucial when designing a regulatory framework for developing countries

the impact of resource tax reform on china s coal industry abstract contributing to approximately two thirds of primary energy consumption coal usage is the focus of china s energy policies to regulate the resource taxation system and reduce the burden of coal enterprises the chinese government launched a reform of its resource tax system in 2014 for coal introducing the ad valorem system to replace the volume based system that had been in place for the preceding thirty years to assess the impact of the tax reform this paper constructs two stage dynamic game models by taking the coal and coal fired power industries as the players the market situations of shortage and oversupply are investigated separately empirical data are collected to estimate the model parameters for numerical simulations the model results suggest that the tax reform will reduce both coal prices and the coal industry profitability if the tax levied on each ton of coal is maintained at the same level as before the reform regardless of whether the market is in a shortage or an oversupply situation however the increased buyer s power will amplify the effect of the tax reform the numerical simulations also provide an estimation of the tax rate of the ad valorem system that maintains the profit of the coal industry considering the demand and supply situations in china s coal market policy recommendations are provided to guide further reform of china s resource tax system

asset allocation risk models for alternative investments often the lack of mark to market data lures investors into the misconception that alternative asset classes and strategies represent somewhat of a free lunch this article proposes solutions to measuring mark tomarket risk in alternative and illiquid investments the authors describe how to estimate risk factor exposures when the available asset return series may be smoothed owing to the difficulty of obtaining market based valuations they show that alternative investments are exposed to many of the same risk factors that drive stock and bond returns i nvestors have long recognized that asset class returns are driven by a common set of risk factors asset allocators often use the risk factor approach to improve portfolio diversification and to translate macroeconomic views into expected asset returns in practice implementing a risk factor approach to asset allocation requires mapping asset classes to their underlying factor exposures which can be challenging especially for asset classes for which the available historical data are limited or biased in this article we propose solutions to measuring mark to market risk in alternative and illiquid investments we describe how to estimate risk factor exposures when the available asset return series may be smoothed owing to the difficulty of obtaining market based valuations we show that alternative investments are exposed to many of the same risk factors that drive stock and bond returns our approach has profound implications for risk estimation in an asset allocation context for example figure 1 shows the difference between adjusted and reported from index returns volatilities for several alternative investments as well as for public markets equities and bonds it also shows a measure of autocorrelation which highlights how return smoothing contributes to the misestimation of volatility the bottom line is that alternative investments are much more volatile on a mark to market basis than their reported index returns would suggest this bias tends to be more pronounced for indices that are smoothed in this article we describe the methodology used to arrive at these adjustments and include other key risk measures relevant to asset allocation we recognize that there already is a significant body of literature that attempts to estimate risk factor exposures for various individual alternative investments and strategies however little research has been done to estimate the risk factor exposures across all alternatives within an internally consistent unified risk factor framework given increased allocations to alternative investments in institutional investors portfolios we see an urgent need to develop a consistent approach that directly integrates the risks of alternative assets with the rest of investors portfolios

the relation between stock prices and inflationary expectations the international evidence this paper provides empirical evidence on the relation between stock returns and inflationary expectations for nine countries over the period 1971 80 the fisherian assumption that real returns are independent of inflationary expectations is soundly rejected for each major stock market of the world using interest rates as a proxy for expected inflation our data provide consistent support for the geske and roll model whose basic hypothesis is that stock price movements signal negative revisions in inflationary expectations finally a weak real interest rate effect was found for some of these countries

the virtues of gradualism and legitimacy in the transition to a market economy this paper presents a simplified model of sectoral restructuring in eastern europe a move towards allocative efficiency is desired by the reform minded government but the shift to higher productivity which such efficiency requires would lead to massive layoffs and labour reallocation in the transition period we look at the impact of political constraints unanimity and or majority worker approval on reform proposals when the government faces a heterogeneous workforce holding private information on relative outside opportunities when the budgetary consequences of exit compensations are so important as to make partial reforms preferable to full reforms gradualism emerges as the optimum in a dynamic context without government commitment it is also shown that under democratic majority rule a government in control of the agenda of reforms can win majority approval for plans which end up hurting majority interests intertemporally by threatening to switch majorities in future reform proposals this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

taxation of nonrenewable resources at various stages of production a general method of assessing tax policy effects in exhaustible resource industries is derived the model includes both extraction and processing by a vertically integrated firm and taxation can occur at any stage of production many of the standard results of the theoretical resource taxation literature are derived in a unified framework when stages of production are introduced it is seen that tax policy effects can differ dramatically from those predicted by the simpler model after the method of determining the effects of existing taxes is derived a procedure for designing taxes that achieve desired goals is analysed

mixed oligopoly with differentiated products abstract the paper analyzes a mixed oligopoly with horizontal product differentiation firms choose their location and price in a model a la hotelling with quadratic transport costs and the solution concept is a subgame perfect nash equilibrium this enables one to determine how the presence of one or several public firms competing with private ones affects social welfare and how the results depend on the total number of firms n and their relative positions it is shown that is only for n 2 or n 6 that a mixed oligopoly with one public firm is socially preferable to the private oligopoly

rent extracting tariffs and the management of exhaustible resources this paper examines the interaction between a resource exporting and a resource importing country the exporting country must choose the optimal rate of depletion of an exhaustible resource and also must decide on the allocation of the extracted resource between exports and domestic use optimal management from a national point of view entails inefficiency from a global perspective in that too little resource is exported as the supplying country exploits its monopoly power the importing country however has an incentive to extract some of the resource rent by using a tariff although rent extraction is limited by the exporter s ability to use the resource domestically the optimal tariff is positive and induces greater overall inefficiency

when does privatization work the impact of private ownership on corporate performance in the transition economies this paper compares the performance of privatized and state firms in the transition economies of central europe while controlling for various forms of selection bias it argues that privatization has different effects depending on the types of owners to whom it gives control in particular privatization to outsider but not insider owners has significant performance effects where privatization is effective the effect on revenue performance is very pronounced but there is no comparable effect on cost reduction overlooking the strong revenue effect of privatization to outsider owners leads to a substantial overstatement of potential employment losses from postprivatization restructuring

covariance misspecification in asset allocation series of returns to broad asset classes often possess histories of unequal length and have been subject to smoothing estimates of covariances are generally based on the common although shorter series length and covariances for smoothed series are necessarily biased downward these characteristics pose serious problems that can generate suboptimal and misleading allocations among asset classes the article discusses elements of the underlying theory in proposing an informationally efficient covariance estimator the estimator is then compared with conventional covariance estimates in an empirical application covariance estimates are found to be sensitive to both truncated estimates involving shorter series and the effects of smoothing

common stochastic trends in european stock markets the objective of the paper is to investigate whether price indices of different european stock markets display a common long run trending behaviour using cointegration analysis we provide empirical evidence of common stochastic trends among five important european stock markets over the period 1975 1991

are stocks a good hedge against inflation evidence from emerging markets theory suggests that equities are a good hedge against inflation however most of the empirical evidence for industrialized economies suggests that the relationship between stock returns and inflation is negative one explanation is the negative correlation between inflation and real output growth this paper examines the relationship between inflation and stock returns for ten important emerging stock market esm markets namely chile mexico brazil argentina thailand s korea malaysia hong kong philippines and turkey during the 1990s to anticipate the results the relationship between stock returns and inflation for the whole sample period is positive and statistically significant for three of the sample esms while it is positive but statistically insignificant for a further three only for one esm is the relationship negative and statistically significant this result may be due to the role of money and the positive relationship between consumer prices and output

extraction costs and the economics of nonrenewable resources the study questions the fundamental assumption of the standard aggregate exploration extraction model of nonrenewable resources that extraction costs and the level of reserves are inversely related it also raises questions about the model s conclusions regarding exploration incentives and the valuation of reserves an empirically tested disaggregate model is presented that suggests that exploration activity occurs from firms attempting to balance marginal extraction plus user costs at the intensive and extensive margins exploration is carried out until the marginal discovery cost of a deposit equals its present asset value and a u shaped price path is indicated

pricing and depletion of an exhaustible resource when there is anticipation of trade disruption this paper considers pricing and depletion of an exhaustible nonrenewable resource in an economy wherein domestic consumption is provided for by supplementing extraction from the economy s own resource stock with imports the future supply of which is not assured the socially optimal response to threat of trade disruption is a more conservationist depletion program for the domestic resource stock than would be called for if import supplies were assured to persist competitive domestic firms adopt the socially optimal conversationist program however firms anticipating domestic market power after the disruption of import supplies are revealed to overextract the domestic resource stock 33 references 2 figures

privatization policies in central and eastern europe privatization in central and eastern europe patrick bolton and gerard roland this paper assesses policies of mass privatization in germany czechoslovakia hungary and poland a central concern stemming from the analysis is that in view of the fiscal crisis facing economies in transition it is crucial for governments to try to maximize the proceeds from the sale of state assets because of the low initial level of private wealth it is important in this respect to let potential buyers borrow from the government or issue claims on future revenues obtained with the privatized assets to the government in order to pay for the privatized firms allowing for such non cash bids removes the government s incentive to delay privatization for fiscal reasons reduces its ability to squander immediately the proceeds from privatization and improves the decentralization of control by allowing less wealthy but more able bidders to buy the firms they are best suited to run

the inflation hedging properties of turkish reits this study empirically tests the inflation hedging abilities of turkish reits in comparison to the indices of common stocks listed on the istanbul stock exchange ise over the period december 1999 to december 2004 two main factors motivate this study first compared to their counterparts in developed capital markets turkish reits have some important tax incentives as well as flexibility in managing their portfolios second the turkish economy provides a rare and good opportunity to test the hedging behaviour of real estate stocks in periods of both high and moderate inflation rates the empirical results show that turkish reits in general provide a better hedge against both actual and expected inflation than do the ise common stock indices dividing the entire sample period into the high and moderate inflation sub periods we find that the hedging ability of reits is better under high inflation than under moderate inflation

does budget deficit lower equity prices in usa abstract this paper investigates the relationship between budget deficits and stock prices incorporating the effects of inflation and the demographic structure the results show that while the proportion of population in their prime earning age has a positive effect both budget deficits and inflation have a negative impact on stock prices

mixed oligopoly privatization and subsidization abstract this paper demonstrates three effects of domestic production subsidies in a mixed oligopoly industry regarding privatization and efficiency first if subsidies are used before and after privatization welfare is unchanged by privatization second if subsidies are used only before privatization then privatization always lowers welfare regardless of the number of private firms in the industry third the subsidy contributes to overall efficiency in a mixed oligopoly due to cost distribution effects

international r d rivalry and industrial strategy this paper presents a theory of government intervention which provides an explanation for industrial strategy policies such as r d or export subsidies in imperfectly competitive international markets domestic net welfare is improved by the capture of a greater share of the output of rent earning industries although the subsidy ridden noncooperative international equilibrium is jointly suboptimal behaviour of governments and firms is modelled as a three stage subgame perfect nash equilibrium the assumption that the government is the first player in this game allows it to influence equilibrium outcomes by altering the set of credible actions open to firms