the forecasting ability of correlations implied in foreign exchange options abstract this paper evaluates the forecasting accuracy of correlations derived from implied volatilities in dollar mark dollar yen and mark yen options from january 1989 to may 1995 as a forecast of realized correlation between the dollar mark and dollar yen implied correlation is compared against three alternative forecasts based on time series data historical correlation riskmetrics exponentially weighted moving average correlation and correlation estimated using a bivariate garch 1 1 model at the 1 month and 3 month forecast horizons we find that implied correlation outperforms often significantly these alternative forecasts in combinations implied correlation always incrementally improves the performance of other forecasts but not the converse in certain cases historically based forecasts contribute no incremental information to implied forecasts the superiority of the implied correlation forecast holds even when forecast errors are weighted by realized variances reflecting correlation s contribution to the dollar variance of a multicurrency portfolio

valuation of foreign currency options some empirical tests this paper investigates the efficiency of the market for foreign currency options with the help of a modified version of the black scholes model the evidence in the ex post tests is inconsistent with this hypothesis since we find a large number of opportunities for abnormal profits a second set of tests is conducted on an ex ante basis to determine whether these profit opportunities exist even if the execution of the strategy is delayed by one day the evidence from these tests provides more support for the hypothesis of market efficiency

the hidden information content of price movements dynamic patterns of prices in different markets may motivate strategic consumers who could be monitoring price movements over time to game vendors do past price movements carry information about the probability and magnitude of future price drops conducting empirical work in the airline industry on near 1000 us domestic routes we find that some price metrics carry information about future price swings these variables can assist in predicting the likelihood and magnitude of price drops these price metrics yield significantly different signals which also vary as the prediction horizon changes

an empirical test of a valuation model for american options on futures contracts pricing models for american call and put options on futures contracts are derived herein these models are used to investigate the efficiency of the market for options on standard poor 500 and german mark futures the evidence presented here indicates that market prices for these options deviate substantially from their corresponding model prices in addition it is shown that a hedging strategy originated at prices that indicate a deviation of market from model is successful in translating the observed mispricing into excess profits after transactions costs however these net profits are eliminated if the origination of the strategy is delayed by one trade or if bid ask spreads are accounted for

population concentration urbanization and demographic transition abstract this paper investigates how urbanization and demographic transition interrelate with each other via merits agglomeration economies and demerits congestion diseconomies of population concentration it reveals the mechanism by which agglomeration economies and congestion diseconomies affect the fertility rate furthermore analysis also shows that by assuming declines in infant and child mortality rate the model developed in this paper can replicate the following well known historical patterns i advances in urbanization ii rises in the wage rate iii declines in fertility and iv rises followed by declines in the population growth rate the inverted u shaped demographic transition

the informational content of implied volatility implied volatility is widely believed to be informationally superior to historical volatility because it is the markets forecast of future volatility but for s p 100 index options the most actively traded contract in the united states we find implied volatility in aggregate and across subsamples separated by maturity and strike price implied volatility has virtually no correlation with future volatility and it does not incorporate the information contained in recent observed volatility article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

urban rural income polarization and economic growth in china evidence from the analysis of a dynamic panel data model using a dynamic panel data model and the system gmm this article examines the relationship between urban rural income polarization and economic growth at the provincial level in the period 1995 to 2010 in china the estimated results and significant tests indicate that a certain degree of urban rural income polarization is beneficial to economic growth at the provincial level in both stages for china as a whole though the contribution of urban rural income polarization to economic growth is relatively small aggravating urban rural income polarization has a negative impact on economic growth in china based on a cluster analysis of regional economic growth at the provincial level the authors carried out the same analysis separately for two categories of regions too the results for those two categories of regions show that positive correlations also exist between urban rural income polarization and economic growth in both stages which are very similar to the analysis for the whole of china in additio

on measuring the risk of common stocks implied by options prices a note this paper examines the implied standard deviation isd estimated from transactons data on options using the black scholes pricing model it was found that the distribution of the isd is symmetric though not normal also the isd based on the last daily observation deviates significantly from the daily average isd it is suggested that the daily average is a more reliable estimate of the standard deviation

on the efficiency of the gold options market standardized gold options were introduced on the european options exchange in 1981 in the paper we investigate the efficiency of its pricing procedures specifically the put call parity conditions are verified virtually no evidence of profitable riskless arbitrage opportunities could be found a riskless hedging strategy using the black scholes call option pricing model was used to test market efficiency and to check for consistent discrepancies between model and market prices again no evidence of market inefficiency could be found however there are indications that the black scholes model is not appropriate to price out of the money gold options an alternative option pricing model is studied which may remedy this problem

the predictive power of implied volatility evidence from 35 futures markets abstract using data from 35 futures options markets from eight separate exchanges we test how well the implied volatilities ivs embedded in option prices predict subsequently realized volatility rv in the underlying futures we find that for this broad array of futures options iv performs well in a relative sense for a large majority of the commodities studied the implieds outperform historical volatility hv as a predictor of the subsequently rv in the underlying futures prices over the remaining life of the option indeed in most markets examined regardless of whether it is modeled as a simple moving average or in a garch framework hv contains no economically significant predictive information beyond what is already incorporated in iv these findings add to previous research that has focused on currency and crude oil futures by extending the analysis into a very broad array of contracts and exchanges our results are consistent with the hypothesis that futures options markets in general with their minimal trading frictions are efficient

the pricing of convexity risk and timedecay in options markets abstract option valuation formulas typically assume all risk can be eliminated in a continuously rebalanced hedge but convexity of the option pricing function and time decay cause risk in real world hedges we find strong evidence in stock options transactions data from periods 10 years apart that the market prices these risks there is a significant price effect associated with convexity that becomes larger immediately following a period of larger stock price movements although time decay is highly correlated with convexity a multiple regression including both factors shows it to have a significant independent effect the results from the two sample periods are highly consistent as are pre and post crash results from the year 1987

intervention strategies and exchange rate volatility a noise trading perspective abstract this paper estimates and explains the impacts of sterilized us intervention on exchange rate volatility i find that intervention reduced both yen dollar and dm dollar exchange rate volatilities during 1985 1986 but increased them during 1987 1989 these results are explained in a noise trading framework where the effectiveness of sterilized intervention may depend critically on the design and implementation of intervention strategies jel f31 1997 elsevier science ltd

forecasting financial volatilities with extreme values the conditional autoregressive range carr model we propose a dynamic model for the high low range of asset prices within fixed time intervals the conditional autoregressive range model henceforth carr the evolution of the conditional range is specified in a fashion similar to the conditional variance models as in garch and is very similar to the autoregressive conditional duration acd model of engle and russell 1998 extreme value theories imply that the range is an efficient estimator of the local volatility e g parkinson 1980 hence carr can be viewed as a model of volatility out of sample volatility forecasts using the s p500 index data show that the carr model does provide sharper volatility estimates compared with a standard garch model

a note on the measurement of equity duration and convexity the appropriate measure of equity duration and by extension convexity is a controversial matter in 1986 leibowitz presented empirical duration measures that are considerably shorter than those derived from a traditional dividend discount model a class of dividend discount models developed by hurley and johnson is used to try to reconcile the difference the values derived for equity duration are intermediate between the leibowitz and traditional measures these models overcome the standard criticism of dividend discount models by allowing for realistic patterns of future dividend growth corresponding models of equity convexity developed by johnson are used to derive equity convexity

using daily range data to calibrate volatility diffusions and extract the forward integrated variance a common model for security price dynamics is the continuous time stochastic volatility model for this model hull and white 1987 show that the price of a derivative claim is the conditional expectation of the black scholes price with the forward integrated variance replacing the black scholes variance implementing the hull and white characteriza tion requires both estimates of the price dynamics and the conditional distribution of the forward integrated variance given observed variables using daily data on close to close price movement and the daily range we find that standard models do not fit the data very well and that a more general three factor model does better as it mimics the long memory feature of financial volatility we develop techniques for estimating the conditional distribution of the forward integrated variance given observed variables i introduction

the effects of shifts in monetary policy and reserve accounting regimes on bank reserve management behavior in the federal funds market abstract this paper looks at the effects on fed fund rates and fed fund purchasing behavior of large banks resulting from i the 1982 regime switch from non borrowed to borrowed reserve targeting by the fed and ii the 1984 switch from lagged to almost contemporaneous reserve accounting cra whether we analyse changes in the interest rate or quantity dimensions the shift in monetary policy targets appeared to have had a more profound effect on the market for bank reserves than the shift in reserve accounting regime these results therefore tend to support the contention that a shift to cra by itself will have little effect on bank reserve management behavior unless combined with its logical counterpart a total reserves target

predicting currency return volatility abstract standard deviations and elasticity of variance coefficients implied in currency option prices are employed to predict subsequent currency return volatility despite documented variance non stationarity strong predictive relationships are found the predictive accuracies of standard deviations and elasticity coefficients are statistically indistinguishable finally predictive accuracy is invariant to the weighting techniques employed

a total differential approach to equity duration most of the risk associated with fixed income price movements is accounted for by their duration that is their sensitivity to changes in the discount rate thus for bonds duration and interest rate sensitivity are virtually synonymous for equities however duration is only one of several factors describing risk a major source of confusion in evaluating equity duration is the definition of duration itself measured as a function of the sensitivity of stock price to the discount rate ignoring all links between the discount rate and the growth rate the traditional dividend discount model ddm duration is long 20 years or more but this measure of duration fails to take into account the offsetting effects of inflation induced rate increases on corporate profits a measure of the total sensitivity of stock prices to interest rate movements recognizes that the two components of nominal interest rates inflation and the real rate affect both the equity discount rate and the equity earnings growth rate but not necessarily in the same direction the stock market as a whole is less sensitive to changes in inflation expectations than to changes in real rates because most companies can raise prices hence nominal growth rates in times of inflation thus a measure of stock price total sensitivity to interest rates will generally be substantially shorter than the duration measure derived from the traditional ddm

volatility in crude oil futures a comparison of the predictive ability of garch and implied volatility models the wti future contract quoted at the nymex is the most actively traded instrument in the energy sector this paper compares the predictive ability of two approaches which can be used to forecast volatility garch type models where forecasts are obtained after estimating time series models and an implied volatility model where forecasts are obtained by inverting one of the models used to price options although the main scope of the research discussed here is to evaluate which model produces the best forecast of volatility for the wti future contract evaluated according to statistical and regression based criteria we also investigate whether volatility of the oil futures are affected by asymmetric effects whether parameters of the garch models are influenced by the distribution of the errors and whether allowing for a time varying long run mean in the volatility produces any improvement on the forecast obtained from garch models

how does germany s green energy policy affect electricity market volatility an application of conditional autoregressive range models abstract based on a dynamic model for the high low range of electricity prices this article analyses the effects of germany s green energy policy on the volatility of the electricity market using european energy exchange data from 2000 to 2015 we find rather high volatility in the years 2000 2009 but also that the weekly price range has significantly declined in the period following the year 2009 this period is characterised by active regulation under the energy industry law enwg the eu emissions trading directive etd and the renewable energy law eeg in contrast to the preceding period price jumps are smaller and less frequent especially for day time hours implying that current policy measures are effective in promoting renewable energies while simultaneously upholding electricity market stability this is because the regulations strive towards a more and more flexible and market oriented structure which allows better integration of renewable energies and supports an efficient alignment of renewable electricity supply with demand

total portfolio duration a new perspective on asset allocation the concept of duration has proved to be a valuable tool for gauging the sensitivity of a bond portfolio to movements in interest rates by balancing the duration of a fixed income portfolio against the duration of the stream of liabilities it is funding one creates a portfolio that is immunized against interest rate changes but what if the portfolio contains stocks as well as bonds the interest rate risk of an equity portfolio can be estimated from a measure of the correlation between stock and bonds by using variance parameters routinely used in conventional asset allocation procedures the correlation is used in conjunction with a measure of bond market duration to derive an estimate of the duration of the stock market these durations together with a portfolio s allocations to stocks and bonds and the beta of the stock component may be used to obtain a measure of total portfolio duration what the duration measure tells us in general is that a total portfolio s sensitivity to interest rate mo

testing the warrant pricing model abstract implied variances from traded call options are used to compute the model prices of warrants issued by the corresponding firms several examples show that the model prices do not provide accurate estimates of the actual warrant prices even after accounting for transactions costs

exchange rate risk and transactions costs evidence from bid ask spreads abstract this paper develops a model of exchange rate bid ask spreads which is used to examine the relationship between exchange rate risk and volatility and to measure transactions costs the empirical results indicate that market makers judge the probability of exchange rate changes based on both recent and long term volatility and that the second moment alone is not a complete measure of volatility while a proxy for trading volume does not have the expected relationship with spreads weekend and holiday effects conform to theory transactions costs vary over time and seem responsive to the imposition of exchange controls

the valuation and market rationality of internet stock prices this paper provides an analysis of some existing as well as new evidence of the relation between market prices and fundamentals in the internet sector over the period january 1998 to february 2000 appealing to results across a broad class of outcomes we demonstrate a strong circumstantial case against market rationality in particular we investigate i the level of internet stock prices given their underlying fundamentals ii responses of stock prices to information based events and iii the volatility of internet prices we review several potential explanations of these phenomena including one based on heterogeneous beliefs across investors who are subject to short sales constraints we provide a discussion of the empirical evidence supporting this latter explanation copyright 2002 oxford university press

oil price uncertainty and clean energy stock returns new evidence from crude oil volatility index abstract earlier studies evidence that oil price shocks have significant impacts on clean energy stock returns while the previous literature uses traditional oil price series to investigate such effects we aim to assess whether the variance of alternative energy stock returns can be explained using the information content of crude oil volatility index ovx an indicator of oil price uncertainty to serve our purpose we employ several measures to frame the realized volatility rv of alternative energy sector equity returns in particular we use three different range based rv estimators recommended by parkinson 1980 rogers and satchell 1991 and alizadeh et al 2002 respectively our findings reveal that clean energy stock market returns are highly sensitive to ovx shocks thus oil market uncertainty measured by ovx embodies a crucial role in modeling the volatility of renewable energy equity returns in addition we find a strong indication that ovx provides additional information beyond what is contained in the historical volatilities of equity returns we also document that the magnitude of the effect of ovx is much bigger than that of the realized variance of wti oil spot prices finally we find that the information content of crude oil volatility index improves the volatility forecasts for the clean energy equity market

time varying volatilities and calculation of the weighted implied standard deviation rogalski tinic have reported a monthly pattern in ex post stock return variances that differs between small and large market capitalization firms maloney rogalski find that option prices reflect these monthly patterns ex ante this study extends maloney rogalski s work by devising an expiration specific weighted implied standard deviation wisd it is found that i the monthly patterns in one month wisds are basically similar to the monthly patterns in ex post variances detected by rogalski tinic for both large and small size firms and ii use of expiration specific wisds as opposed to standard composite wisds results in improved performance of option pricing models

dynamic spillovers between oil and stock markets in the gulf cooperation council countries this article exploits a new spillover directional measure proposed by diebold and yilmaz 2009 2012 to investigate the dynamic spillover of return and volatility between oil and equities in the gulf cooperation council countries during the period 2004 to 2012 our results indicate that return and volatility transmissions are bi directional albeit asymmetric in particular the oil market gives other markets more than it receives in terms of both returns and volatilities these trends were more pronounced in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008 as the net contribution of oil has intensified after a burst during the crisis the empirical evidence from the sample is consistent with a system in which oil is playing the dominant role in the information transmission mechanism between oil and equities in the gcc countries

valuation of american options on foreign currency abstract pricing models for american call and put options on foreign currency are derived herein these models are used to investigate the efficiency of the market for foreign currency options the evidence presented here indicates that market prices for these options deviate substantially from their corresponding model prices in addition it is shown that a hedging strategy executed at transaction prices can be used to translate an observed deviation of market from model prices into positive excess profits however these profits are eliminated if the strategy is executed at bid and offer prices

errors in implied volatility estimation estimating implied volatility by inverting the black scholes formula is subject to considerable error when option characteristics are observed with plausible errors especially for options away from the money large changes in volatility produce small changes in option prices conversely small errors in option prices and other option characteristics produce large errors in implied volatilities in the presence of small measurement errors unobserved truncation of option prices that violate lower bounds for absence of arbitrage can also lead to systematic volatility smiles the paper proposes feasible gls estimators that reduce the noise and bias in implied volatility estimates

urban rural income disparities and development in a panel data set of china for the period from 1978 to 2006 we examine the relationship between urban rural income disparities and development in a panel data set of 30 provinces and regional subsets of china during the period of 1978 to 2006 there is an inverted u relationship between the urban rural income gap and per capita gross domestic product gdp financial development by scale widens the urban rural income gap in all regional samples while financial sector efficiency and rural bank loans may reduce it in some regions government spending raises the urban rural income gap as well we also examine the effects of urbanization openness and education

the efficiency of the finnish market for right issues abstract this paper analyzes the efficiency of the finnish market for right issues the rights traded on the helsinki stock exchange hse are similar instruments to warrants with some special features attached to them the paper first derives appropriate arbitrage conditions for these rights which must be satisfied in informationally efficient markets and then examines these conditions using both ex post and ex ante test procedures the ex post tests which jointly examine market efficiency and synchroneity of the rights and stock market show a staggering amount of violations against the arbitrage bounds however the ex ante tests reveal that high transaction costs prevent normal investors from benefitting from these violations stockbrokers themselves however seem to be able to earn arbitrage profits in the rights market

forecasting daily exchange rate volatility using intraday returns abstract this study investigates whether intraday returns contain important information for forecasting daily volatility whereas in the existing literature volatility models for daily returns are improved by including intraday information such as the daily high and low volume the number of trades and intraday returns here the volatility of intraday returns is explicitly modelled daily volatility forecasts are constructed from multiple volatility forecasts for intraday intervals it is shown for the dem usd and the yen usd exchange rates that this results in superior forecasts for daily volatility

option values under stochastic volatility theory and empirical estimates abstract this paper numerically solves the call option valuation problem given a fairly general continuous stochastic process for return volatility statistical estimators for volatility process parameters are derived and parameter estimates are calculated for several individual stocks and indices the resulting estimated option values do not differ dramatically from black scholes values in most cases although there is some evidence that for longer maturity index options black scholes overvalues out of the money calls in relation to in the money calls

variances of security price returns based on high low and closing prices in a recent paper garman and klass 1980 studied the problem of estimating capital asset price volatility parameters developing an idea first introduced by parkinson 1980 they argue that improved volatility measures can be obtained by taking into account the daily high low and opening prices in addition to the traditionally used closing prices this paper is concerned mainly with testing the empirical validity of different volatility estimators based on high low and closing prices

an analysis of commercial bank common stock returns 1802 97 this study creates analyses for the first time a continous index of returns on commercial bank common stocks listed in a specific market the index is constructed from a unique set of historical data and is calculated on both a weighted and unweighted basis first including and then excluding dividends a measure of volatility is calculated annually the results indicate that the dividend component of holding period returns is very important including dividends average returns were 6 0 for the century excluding dividends average returns were 0 1 excess returns were calculated using two different measures of a riskless rate of return cumulative excess returns for the first half of the nineteenth century were negative real returns were calculated and found to be generally positive over the century the volatility of returns was quite high during certain periods examining the effects of significant economic and political events on bank common stock returns we find that the war of 1812 the civil

urban rural gap and poverty traps in china a prefecture level analysis urban rural gap and regional inequality are long standing problems in china and result in considerable number of studies this article examines the dynamic behaviours of incomes for both urban and

estimating the volatility of discrete stock prices this paper introduces an estimator of stock price volatility that eliminates at least asymptotically the biases that are caused by the discreteness of observed stock prices assuming that the observed stock prices are continuously monitored an estimator is constructed using the notion of how quickly the price changes rather than how much the price changes it is shown that this estimator has desirable asymptotic properties including consistency and asymptotic normality also through a simulation study the authors show that it outperforms natural estimators for the low and middle priced stocks furthermore the simulation study demonstrates that the proposed estimator is robust to certain misspecifications in measuring the time between price changes

option pricing and implicit volatilities abstract this paper demonstrates that black scholes implied volatilities can be used to value options in many situations where the assumptions of the black scholes model are violated including i alternative stock processes ii stochastic interest rates and iii market frictions given its computational simplicity this procedure provides an attractive alternative to the more complex models with a direct estimation procedure

standard deviations implied in option prices as predictors of future stock price variability abstract standard deviations implied in option prices have recently been introduced as being better than average predictors of future stock price variability this article specifically studies the predictive ability of implicit standard deviations taking into account the dividend problem and the problem of optimal weighting schemes of the standard deviations when there are several options on the same stock transaction data information was used to study the importance of non simultaneities in observing stock and option prices

modelling implied volatility with ols and panel data models abstract the paper performs an empirical estimation of time varying volatility using ols regression error components and dummy variable models by regressing the implied volatility on time to maturity the strike price and a dummy both the daily ols equations and the panel data model provide more accurate estimates of black and scholes option prices than the bench mark standard deviation of log returns ft se 100 index european options are used for empirical analysis

the long breadth of cities revisiting worldwide urbanization patterns 1950 2030 abstracta comparative analysis of population dynamics worldwide contributes to profile distinctive demographic and economic trajectories of urban growth discriminating processes of settlement conc