dynamic interaction between markets for leasing and selling automobiles we develop a model of dynamic interactions between price variations in leasing and selling markets for automobiles our framework assumes a differential game between multiple bertrand type competing firms which offer differentiated products to forward looking agents empirical analysis of our model using monthly us data from 2002 to 2011 shows that variations in selling cash market prices lead rapidly dissipating changes of leasing market prices in the opposite direction we discuss the practical implications of these results by augmenting a standard leasing valuation formula the additional terms represent the leased asset value changes that can be expected on the basis of past variations in automobile selling market prices

sales and collusion in a market with storage sales are a widespread and well known phenomenon documented in several product markets this paper presents a novel rationale for sales that does not rely on consumer heterogeneity or on any form of randomness to explain such periodic price fluctuations the analysis is carried out in the context of a simple repeated price competition model and establishes that firms must periodically reduce prices in order to sustain collusion when goods are storable and the market is large the largest equilibrium profits are characterized at any market size a trade off between the size of the industry and its profits arises sales foster collusion by magnifying the inter temporal links in consumers decisions

equilibrium price dispersion with consumer inventories abstract a model with two types of consumers shoppers and captives is constructed that leads to an equilibrium price dispersion shoppers may hold inventories of the good the level of consumer inventories leads to state dependent price dispersions it is shown that prices and quantities display negative serial correlation the model is tested using grocery store data which display the predicted correlations journal of economic literature classification numbers d43 l13 d83 l81

lp modeling for asset liability management a survey of choices and simplifications dynamic linear programming lp models for asset liability management alm are quite powerful and flexible but face two challenges 1 many modeling choices not all consistent with one another or with finance theory and 2 solution difficulties due to the large number of scenarios obtained from standard interest rate models we first survey these modeling choices with a view to help researchers make self consistent choices next we review how the dynamic lp model for alm and the representation of uncertainty therein have been simplified in the past to motivate new or hybrid models emphasizing tractability to this end we review existing static lp models as extreme modeling simplifications and aggregation as a simplification of uncertainty

asymmetric price adjustments a supply side approach using a model of dynamic price competition we provide an explanation from the supply side for the well established observation that output prices react faster in response to input cost increases than to decreases when costs decline the opportunity of profitable storing in anticipation of higher future costs allows competitive firms to coordinate on prices above current marginal costs the initial price response is only partial and profitable storing relaxes competition conversely when costs rise storing is not beneficial in anticipation of lower future costs and firms immediately adjust their prices to current marginal costs which entails the standard bertrand outcome our results shed new light on the empirical evidence about asymmetric pricing and can stimulate further empirical investigation on this puzzle

durable goods theory for real world markets the early 1970s witnessed three major advances in durable goods theory swan 1970 1971 and sieper and swan 1973 on optimal durability coase 1972 on time inconsistency and akerlof 1970 on adverse selection this paper surveys durable goods theory starting with these three contributions where much of the focus is on recent literature and on models that explain real world phenomena in addition to the ideas found in the contributions of swan coase and akerlof topics covered include why producers sometimes practice planned obsolescence the role of adverse selection in new car leasing and reasons for aftermarket monopolization

durable goods monopolists durable goods monopolists face special problems because the sale of their products creates a secondhand market not controlled by the monopolist to the extent the monopolist is able to rent his product rather than sell it or to make binding promises about his future production such problems are ameliorated given the inability to do the above the monopolist is led to producing goods less durable than those produced by either competitive firms or monopolist returns a reverse averch johnson result that monopolist sellers may invest less in fixed costs including plant modernization and research and development than would the renters is shown it is also shown that even though sellers have less monopoly power than renters and nondurable goods monopolists it is possible that the seller will cause a greater deadweight loss than the other types of monopolies

interest rate volatility and the term structure a two factor general equilibrium model we develop a two factor general equilibrium model of the term structure the factors are the short term interest rate and the volatility of the short term interest rate we derive closed form expressions for discount bonds and study the properties of the term structure implied by the model the dependence of yields on volatility allows the model to capture many observed properties of the term structure we also derive closed form expressions for discount bond options we use hansen s generalized method of moments framework to test the cross sectional restrictions imposed by the model the tests support the two factor model there are essentially two approaches to the modeling of the term structure of interest rates in continuous time the equilibrium approach pioneered by

retail pricing and clearance sales sellers of new products are faced with having to guess demand conditions to set price appropriately but sellers are able to adjustprice over time and to learn from past mistakes additionally it is not necessary that all goods be sold with certainty it is sometimes better to set a high price and to risk no sale this process is modeledto explain retail pricing behavior and the time distribution of transactions prices start high and fall as a function of time on theshelf the initial price and rate of decline can be predicted and depends on thinness of the market the proportion of customers who are window shoppers and other observable characteristics copyright 1986 by american economic association

china s official rates and bond yields abstract recent research shows that bond yields are influenced by monetary policy decisions to learn how this works in a bond market that differs significantly from those in the us and europe we model chinese bond yields using the one year deposit interest rate as a state variable we also include the spread between the one year market interest rate and the one year deposit interest rate as another factor the model is developed in an affine framework and closed form solutions are obtained we then test the model empirically with a markov chain monte carlo simulation procedure the results show that the new model that incorporates the official rate in china characterizes the changing shape of the yield curve well

storable good monopoly the role of commitment we study dynamic monopoly pricing of storable goods in an environment where demand changes over time the literature on durables has focused on incentives to delay purchases our analysis focuses on a different intertemporal demand incentive for consumers the key force on the consumer side is advance purchases or stockpiling this stockpiling motive can be present in the case of standard durables as well in environments unmodeled in the prior literature we show that if the monopolist cannot commit then prices are higher in all periods and social welfare is lower than in the case in which the monopolist can commit this is in contrast with the durable goods analysis in the literature on the coase conjecture

long forward and zero coupon rates can never fall in frictionless markets having no arbitrage the asymptotic zero coupon rate never falls the same is true of the long forward rate the long par coupon rate can rise and fall due to forward rate movements at short maturities this article relates the three types of interest rates and formalizes and proves the impossibility results for falling asymptotic rates these results can be tested in a parametric term structure specification that is rich enough to identify a time series of long rates the results show that it is not possible to specify arbitrarily the long forward or zero coupon rate process copyright 1996 by university of chicago press

durable goods monopoly with varying demand this paper solves for the proflt maximising strategy of a durable goods monopolist when incoming demand varies over time each period additional consumers enter the market these consumers can then choose whether and when to purchase we flrst characterise the consumer s utility maximisation problem and under a monotonicity condition show the proflt maximising allocation can be solved through a myopic algorithm which has an intuitive marginal revenue interpretation consumers ability to delay creates an asymmetry in the optimal price path which exhibits fast increases and slow declines this asymmetry pushes the price level above that charged by a flrm facing the average level of demand applications of this framework include deterministic demand cycles one ofi shocks and iid demand draws the optimal policy outperforms renting and can be implemented by a time consistent best price provision

on arbitrage free pricing of interest rate contingent claims unlike most interest rate claim models the ho lee model utilizes full information on the current term structure unfortunately the model has a major deficiency in that negative interest rates can occur this article modifies the model such that interest rates are well behaved

an equilibrium model of bond pricing and a test of market efficiency in two previous and related papers 3 4 the authors have reported the results of estimating a particular equilibrium model of bond pricing using quarterly data on canadian government bonds for the period 1964 to 1979 this paper reports the results of applying a similar model to the pricing of u s government bonds for the period 1958 1979 using data from the crsp government bond file the paper also extends the previous empirical analysis by evaluating the ability of the pricing model to detect underpriced and overpriced bonds the data reveal a strong relation between price prediction errors and subsequent bond returns

simulation study of the price differentiation effect in a stochastic deteriorating inventory with heterogeneous consumers freshness sensitivity a fixed price policy regardless of expiration date may result in unsold inventory and sales loss price reduction over time as the expiration date approaches motivates customers to purchase all items including the ones that are left with only a short interval until their expiration we conduct a discrete event simulation that captures the main characteristics of this phenomenon results show that a moderate differentiation of price increases profits by 6 a larger differentiation reduces profits profits are the highest for freshness oriented customers a fixed price policy is preferred in an environment of large variance and expected near term expirations

speculative storage in imperfectly competitive markets markets for many commodities are characterized by imperfectly competitive production as well as substantial storage by speculators who are attracted by significant price volatility we examine how speculative storage affects the behavior of an oligopoly producing a commodity for which demand is subject to random shocks speculators compete with consumers when purchasing the commodity and then subsequently compete with producers when selling their stocks resulting in two opposing incentives on the one hand producers would like to increase production to capture future sales in advance by selling to speculators while on the other hand they would like to withhold production to deter speculation thereby eliminating the additional supply from speculators in future periods we find that the incentive to sell to speculators can be quite strong potentially resulting in prices sufficiently high to drive consumers from the market furthermore these incentives are non monotonic in the number of producers speculative storage occurs more frequently in a relatively concentrated oligopoly than in the extremes of monopoly or perfect competition

foundations of dynamic monopoly and the coase conjecture subgame perfect equilibria are characterized for a market in which the seller quotes a price each period assume zero costs positive interest rate continuum of buyers and some technical conditions if buyers valuations are positive then equilibrium is unique buyers strategies are stationary and the price sequence is determinant along the equilibrium path but possibly randomized elsewhere otherwise a continuum of stationary equilibria can exist but at most one with analytic strategies coase s conjecture is verified for stationary strategies reducing the period length drives all prices to zero or the least valuation connections to bargaining models are described journal qf economic literature classification

cyclic pricing by a durable goods monopolist in the model of this paper a monopoly seller of a durable good holds periodic sales as a means of price discrimination a new cohort of consumers enters the market in each period interested in purchasing the good either immediately or after a delay within each cohort consumers vary in their tastes for the good under broad conditions the seller will vary the price over time in most periods he will charge a price just low enough to sell immediately to consumers with a high willingness to pay periodically however he will drop the price far enough to sell to an accumulated group of consumers with a low willingness to pay

a nonlinear general equilibrium model of the term structure of interest rates abstract we derive and test an alternative closed form general equilibrium model of the term structure within the cox ingersoll and ross theoretical framework in which yields are nonlinear functions of the risk free rate we show that equilibrium bond prices and the risk free rate are not always inversely related and that bond risk need not be strictly increasing in maturity using hansen s generalized method of moments to obtain parameter estimates this nonlinear model outperforms the cox ingersoll and ross square root model in describing actual treasury bill yields for the 1964 1986 period

continuous time methods in finance a review and an assessment i survey and assess the development of continuous time methods in finance during the last 30 years the subperiod 1969 to 1980 saw a dizzying pace of development with seminal ideas in derivatives securities pricing term structure theory asset pricing and optimal consumption and portfolio choices during the period 1981 to 1999 the theory has been extended and modified to better explain empirical regularities in various subfields of finance this latter subperiod has seen significant progress in econometric theory computational and estimation methods to test and implement continuous time models capital market frictions and bargaining issues are being increasingly incorporated in continuous time theory the roots of modern continuous time methods in finance can be traced back to the seminal contributions of merton 1969 1971 1973b in the late 1960s and early 1970s merton 1969 pioneered the use of continuous time modeling in financial economics by formulating the intertemporal consumption and portfolio choice problem of an investor in a stochastic dynamic programming setting merton 1973b also showed how such a framework can be used to develop equilibrium asset pricing implications thereby significantly extending the asset pricing theory to richer dynamic settings and expanding the scope of applications of continuous time methods to study problems in financial economics 1 within a span of about 30 years from the publication of merton s inf luential papers continuous time methods have become an integral part of financial economics indeed in certain core areas in finance such as e g asset pricing derivatives valuation term structure theory and portfolio selection continuoustime methods have proved to be the most attractive way to conduct research and gain economic intuition the continuous time approach in these areas has produced models with a rich variety of testable implications the econometric theory for testing continuous time models has made rapid strides in the last decade and has thus kept pace with the impressive progress on the theoretical front one hopes that the actual empirical investigations and estimation using the new procedures will follow suit soon

storability market structure and demand shift incentives we consider a two period model in which buyers can store a good by purchasing in advance of consumption so as to realize potential gains from intertemporal arbitrage we find that storability introduces a kink in the aggregate period 1 demand when supply is oligopolistic quantity setting and consumers are sufficiently patient storage cost is relatively low each firm has a strong current incentive to capture future market share from a rival as a result in equilibrium the price path is increasing and there is rational in advance purchase by buyers in contrast the monopoly and perfectly competitive markets exhibit no such price dynamics intermediate storage costs result in multiple equilibria with at least one that involves advance purchase and one that does not

an international study of tax effects on government bonds it is shown that coupon bonds alone are not sufficient to span time dated claims on ordinary income capital gains and non taxable wealth in an incomplete bond market where the pure dated claims are not spanned by existing bonds marginal rates of substitution between present consumption and pure dated claims on ordinary income capital gains income and non taxable wealth respectively can differ across bondholders however the relative pricing of coupon bonds in each of these countries is shown to be consistent with the tax status of the major non tax exempt holders of government debt

unspanned stochastic volatility and fixed income derivatives pricing we propose a parsimonious unspanned stochastic volatility model of the term structure and study its implications for fixed income option prices the drift and quadratic variation of the short rate are affine in three state variables the short rate its long term mean and variance which follow a joint markov vector process yet bond prices are exponential affine functions of only two state variables independent of the current interest rate volatility level because this result holds for an arbitrary volatility process such a process can be calibrated to match fixed income derivative prices furthermore this model can be extended by relaxing the time homogeneity to fit any arbitrary term structure in its hjm form this model nests the analogous stochastic equity volatility model of heston 190 heston s l 1993 a closed form solution for options with stochastic volatility review of financial studies 6 327 343 in particular if the volatility process is specified to be affine closed form solutions for interest rate options obtain we propose an efficient algorithm to compute these prices an application using data on caps and floors shows that the model can capture very well the implied black spot volatility surface while simultaneously fitting the observed term structure c 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

an economic theory of planned obsolescence planned obsolescence is the production of goods with uneconomically short useful lives so that customers will have to make repeat purchases however rational customers will pay for only the present value of the future services of a product therefore profit maximization seemingly implies producing any given flow of services as cheaply as possible with production involving efficient useful lives this paper shows why this analysis is incomplete and therefore incorrect monopolists are shown to desire uneconomically short useful lives for their goods oligopolists have the monopolist s incentive for short lives as well as a second incentive that may either increase or decrease their chosen durability however oligopolists can generally gain by colluding to reduce durability and increase rentals relative to sales some evidence is presented that appears to be generally consistent with the predictions of the theory

concurrent renting and selling in a durable goods monopoly under threat of entry this article analyzes the choice of contract sales or rental of a durable goods monopolist facing a threat of future entry although in the absence of such a threat a monopolist would prefer to rent his entire output we show that the threat of entry alters that preference there is an optimal preentry contract mix involving both rental and sales if both firms behave as cournot duopolists after entry the optimal choice of preentry contracts enables the erstwhile monopolist to gain the same profits as he would if he behaved as a von stackelberg leader

implications of implicit credit spread volatilities on interest rate modelling abstract we test seven term structure models in the heath jarrow and morton 1992 class in order to find the best representation of the libor rate in interest rate markets after the credit crunch of 2007 the libor rate is considered as a risky rate subject to the credit risk of a generic counterparty whose credit quality is refreshed at each fixing date we study the volatilities of the credit spreads implicitly obtained from libor time series in order to understand how assumed volatility functions affect interest rate curve modelling and asset pricing we develop a model to estimate basis swap prices through the monte carlo simulations we compare obtained results and individuate systematic relations existing between the basis spread forecast error and both the accuracy in volatility modelling and the accuracy of the monte carlo estimates we analyse and document these relations by defining appropriate pricing error measures

pricing and hedging interest rate options evidence from cap floor markets we examine the pricing and hedging performance of interest rate option pricing models using dailydata on us dollar cap and floor prices across both strike rates and maturities our results show that fitting the skew of the underlying interest rate probability distribution provides accurate pricing results within a one factor framework however for hedging performance introducing a second stochastic factor is more important than fitting the skew of the underlying distribution this constitutes evidence against claims in the literature that correctly specified and calibrated one factor models could replace multi factor models for consistent pricing and hedging of interest rate contingent claims 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

price discrimination and social welfare studies the effect of price discrimination on social welfare using methods from duality theory features of the reservation model presented quasi linear utility and consumers surplus upper and lower bounds on welfare change bounds on welfare change with optimal price discrimination from ebsco

a dynamic model for the forward curve this article develops and estimates a dynamic arbitrage free model of the current forward curve as the sum of i an unconditional component ii a maturity specific component and iii a date specific component the model combines features of the preferred habitat model the expectations hypothesis et and affine yield curve models it permits a class of low parameter multiple state variable dynamic models for the forward curve we show how to construct alternative parametric examples of the three components from a sum of exponential functions verify that the resulting forward curves satisfy the heath jarrow morton hjm conditions and derive the risk neutral dynamics for the purpose of pricing interest rate derivatives we select a model from alternative affine examples that are fitted to the fama bliss treasury data over an initial training period and use it to generate out of sample forecasts for forward rates and yields for forecast horizons of 6 months or longer the forecasts of this model significantly outperform those from common benchmark models jel c53 e43 e47 the structure of forward rates for fixed maturity loans to begin at various dates in the future can be inferred from the prices of treasury securities or directly observed from the extremely active eurodollar futures market the constellation of these rates or of the related yields plays a central role intheallocationofcapital therandombehaviorofthis yieldcurve or the relationship between the yields and the term to maturity is a subject of considerable theoretical and empirical study

discretized reality and spurious profits in stochastic programming models for asset liability management in the literature on stochastic programming models for practical portfolio investment problems relatively little attention has been devoted to the question how the necessarily approximate description of the asset price uncertainty in these models influences the optimal solution in this paper we will show that it is important that asset prices in such a description are arbitrage free descriptions which have been suggested in the literature are often inconsistent with observed market prices and or use sampling to obtain a set of scenarios about the future we will show that this effectively introduces arbitrage opportunities in the optimization model for an investor who cannot exploit arbitrage opportunities directly because of market imperfections and trading restrictions we will illustrate that the presence of such arbitrage opportunities may cause substantial biases in the optimal investment strategy

term structure movements and pricing interest rate contingent claims this paper derives an arbitrage free interest rate movements model ar model this model takes the complete term structure as given and derives the subsequent stochastic movement of the term structure such that the movement is arbitrage free we then show that the ar model can be used to price interest rate contingent claims relative to the observed complete term structure of interest rates this paper also studies the behavior and the economics of the model our approach can be used to price a broad range of interest rate contingent claims including bond options and callable bonds

licensing information goods abstract a significant amount of research on patent licensing and the diffusion of knowledge is organized around static frameworks of analysis patent holders however may face a dynamic problem namely the intertemporal consistency problem of the durable goods monopolist that is induced by durability on the demand side licensing practices such as exclusive licensing contracts and most favored customer clauses allow patentees to solve or mitigate this dynamic consistency problem there are situations however where these practices are not possible either due to the nature of the patent the case of information goods or due to compulsory patenting laws we study the effects of the intertemporal consistency problem on patent licensing in these situations relative to the existing literature we obtain the following main results i all of the firms that remain in the industry will be using the innovation ii royalty licensing may be superior to fixed fee or auction licensing from the licensor s point of view iii social welfare and consumer surplus may be lower than when the patent holder can commit not to make additional sales iv even for non drastic innovations the price of the good that is produced may be lower than the competitive price corresponding to the initial situation before the innovation was discovered

decentralized procurement in light of strategic inventories the centralization versus decentralization choice is perhaps the quintessential organizational structure decision in the operations realm this choice is particularly critical when it comes to the procurement function why firms may opt to decentralize procurement has been often studied and confirmed to be a multifaceted choice this paper complements existing studies by detailing the trade offs in the centralization versus decentralization decision in light of firms strategic use of inventories to influence supplier pricing in particular we demonstrate that a firm s decision to cede procurement choices to its individual divisions can help moderate inventory levels and provide a natural salve on supply chain frictions this paper was accepted by serguei netessine operations management

the pricing of options on default free bonds recent developments in the finance literature dealing with the valuation of contingent claims have been triggered by black and scholes 2 with their valuation of european options on corporate stocks the type of valuation model derived by black and scholes is attractive because it is independent of preferences this independence is possible due to the fact that the contingent claims are usually assumed to be contingent on traded assets or traded state variables for example a european call option is a claim contingent on the value of the corresponding stock to maintain the independence of the claim from preferences however some variables have to be discarded and considered as constants for example the rate of interest which is not a traded state variable is considered a constant in most of the literature see black and scholes 2 merton 11 and ingersoll 9 though this approximation might not cause important discrepancies in the case of corporate liabilities and options on corporate liabilities the effect of such an approximation on the value of default free bonds and options on default free bonds is more important since these liabilities depend only on the rate of interest

time dependent variance and the pricing of bond options in this paper we develop a model for valuing debt options that takes into account the changing characteristics of the underlying bond by assuming that the standard deviation of return is proportional to the bond s duration the resulting model uses the bond price as the single state variable and thus preserves much of the simplicity and robustness of the black scholes approach the paper provides comparisons between option prices computed using this model and those using the black scholes and brennan and schwartz models the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the volatility of bond markets leading to a growing interest in financial instruments that can be used to hedge this risk thus in the u s canada and the u k there has been a proliferation of new interest rate dependent securities such as bond futures options on bonds options on bond futures swap agreements and bonds with option features such as callability putability retractability and so forth with the development of these markets the problems of valuation and the derivation of the hedging strategies have become subjects of increasing importance to both practitioners and academics several valuation methods have been suggested in the literature but so far no consensus has emerged as to the best solution to these problems the simplest approach to the valuation of debt options and probably the most widely used in practice is the black scholes model 3 this method originally developed for the valuation of stock options assumes that the variance of the rate of return on the underlying security is constant while this assumption is plausible for common stocks it is clearly unreasonable for bonds with a finite maturity the distinctive feature of the problem of debt option valuation is that the characteristics of the underlying asset change over time because the price is constrained to converge to the face value of the bond at maturity a second drawback of the black scholes approach is that it assumes a constant short term interest rate an assumption that is clearly inconsistent with stochastic returns on bonds in spite of these problems the black scholes model has been frequently used in practice to value debt options because of its overwhelming simplicity in comparison with other available methods

competitive promotional strategies this article analyzes the equilibrium pricing strategies of brands engaged in a pricing game each brand has a monopoly market loyal consumers and competes with others in a common market called brand switchers in the case of a duopoly it is shown that the behavior of the brand switchers characterizes the equilibrium behavior of the duopolists this article focuses on two key comparative statics namely the depth of discounts away from a regular high price and the probability of giving a deal or the frequency of deals how these properties vary with the size of the loyal markets and the behavior of the brand switching population is discussed copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

one factor interest rate models and the valuation of interest rate derivative securities this paper compares different approaches to developing arbitrage free models of the term structure it presents a numerical procedure that can be used to construct a wide range of one factor models of the short rate that are both markov and consistent with the initial term structure of interest rates

the intersection of market and credit risk abstract economic theory tells us that market and credit risks are intrinsically related to each other and not separable we describe the two main approaches to pricing credit risky instruments the structural approach and the reduced form approach it is argued that the standard approaches to credit risk management creditmetrics creditrisk and kmv are of limited value when applied to portfolios of interest rate sensitive instruments and in measuring market and credit risk empirically returns on high yield bonds have a higher correlation with equity index returns and a lower correlation with treasury bond index returns than do low yield bonds also macro economic variables appear to influence the aggregate rate of business failures the creditmetrics creditrisk and kmv methodologies cannot reproduce these empirical observations given their constant interest rate assumption however we can incorporate these empirical observations into the reduced form of jarrow and turnbull 1995b drawing the analogy risk 5 63 70 model here default probabilities are correlated due to their dependence on common economic factors default risk and recovery rate uncertainty may not be the sole determinants of the credit spread we show how to incorporate a convenience yield as one of the determinants of the credit spread for credit risk management the time horizon is typically one year or longer this has two important implications since the standard approximations do not apply over a one year horizon first we must use pricing models for risk management some practitioners have taken a different approach than academics in the pricing of credit risky bonds in the event of default a bond holder is legally entitled to accrued interest plus principal we discuss the implications of this fact for pricing second it is necessary to keep track of two probability measures the martingale probability for pricing and the natural probability for value at risk we discuss the benefits of keeping track of these two measures

an empirical comparison of forward rate and spot rate models for valuing interest rate options our main goal is to investigate the question of which interest rate options valuation models are better suited to support the management of interest rate risk we use the german market to test seven spot and forward rate models with one and two factors for interest rate warrants for the period from 1990 to 1993 we identify a one factor forward rate model and two spot rate models with two factors that are not significantly outperformed by any of the other four models further rankings are possible if additional criteria are applied

the dynamics of markups and inventories in retailing firms this paper is concerned with the interaction between price and inventory decisions in retailing firms and its implications for the dynamics of markups and the existence of sales pro motions we consider a model where a monopolistically competitive retailer decides price and inventories and assumes lump sum costs when placing orders or changing nominal prices tn this model the existence of stockout probabilities and fixed ordering costs generate a cyclical price behaviour characterized by long periods without nominal price changes and short periods with very low prices i e sales promotions we estimate this model using a unique longitudinal dataset with information about retail and wholesale prices inventories orders and sales for several brands in a supermarket chain based on the estimated model we perform several counterfactual experi ments that show the important role that inventories and fixed ordering costs play in the dynamics of retail prices and the frequency of sales promotions in this dataset

vertical contracts in a supply chain and the bullwhip effect this paper shows that decentralized supply chains in which upstream firms use linear wholesale prices may experience lower upstream production and downstream sales volatility than vertically inte

pricing derivatives on financial securities subject to credit risk this article provides a new methodology for pricing and hedging derivative securities involving credit risk two types of credit risks are considered the first is where the asset underlying the derivative security may default the second is where the writer of the derivative security may default we apply the foreign currency analogy of jarrow and turnbull 1991 to decompose the dollar payoff from a risky security into a certain payoff and a spot exchange rate arbitrage free valuation techniques are then employed this methodology can be applied to corporate debt and over the counter derivatives such as swaps and caps the purpose of this article is to provide a new theory for pricing and hedging derivative securities involving credit risk two sources of credit risk are identified and analyzed the first is where the asset underlying the derivative security may default paying off less than promised this is the case for example with imbedded options on corporate debt the second is the credit risk introduced by the writer of the derivative security who may also default examples include over the counter writers of options on eurodollar futures swaps and swaptions for pricing derivative securities involving credit risk there are currently two approaches the first views these derivatives as contingent claims not on the financial securities themselves but as compound options on the assets underlying the financial securities this is the case for example with the pricing of imbedded options on corporate debt see merton 1974 1977 black and cox 1976 ho and singer 1982 chance 1990 and kim ramaswamy and sundaresan 1993 or the pricing of vulnerable options see johnson and stulz 1987 in practice however this valuation methodology is difficult to use first the assets underlying the financial security are often not tradeable and therefore their values are not observable this makes application of the theory and estimation of the relevant parameters problematic second as in the case of corporate debt all of the other liabilities of the firm senior to the corporate debt must first and simultaneously be valued this generates significant computational difficulties as a result this approach has not

risk management of non maturing liabilities abstract risk management of non maturing liabilities is a relatively unstudied issue of significant practical importance non maturing liabilities include most of the traditional deposit accounts like demand deposits savings accounts and short time deposits and form the basis of the funding of depository institutions therefore the asset and liability management of depository institutions depends crucially on an accurate understanding of the liquidity risk and interest rate risk profile of these deposits in this paper we propose a stochastic three factor model as general quantitative framework for liquidity risk and interest rate risk management for non maturing liabilities it consists of three building blocks market rates deposit rates and deposit volumes we give a detailed model specification and present algorithms for simulation and calibration our approach to liquidity risk management is based on the term structure of liquidity a concept which forecasts for a specified period and probability what amount of cash is available for investment for interest rate risk management we compute the value the risk profile and the replicating bond portfolio of non maturing liabilities using arbitrage free pricing under a variance minimizing measure the proposed methodology is demonstrated by means of a case study the risk management of savings accounts

currency option pricing with mean reversion and uncovered interest parity a revision of the garman kohlhagen model abstract we consider a model for the pricing of currency options where the logarithm of the exchange rate exhibits mean reversion i e follows the omstein uhlenbeck process we mention reasons why exchange rates could exhibit mean reversion the domestic and foreign short interest rates are related to the logarithm of the exchange rate through uncovered interest parity under these assumptions we derive formulas for the value of a european currency option from the point of view of both domestic and foreign investors we also derive formulas for options on forward and futures contracts we compare option values computed by means of the garman kohlhagen model with corresponding results from our model it appears that our model cannot explain all instances of mispricing of currency options by the garman kohlhagen model which have been reported by previous authors the main virtue of our paper however is that we derive a simple model which incorporates clear theoretical relationship between the exchange rate and the domestic and foreign interest rates

the timing of sales this paper presents a model of intertemporal price discrimination a fixed number of sellers produce a homogeneous good consumers with different preferences enter the market in each period and leave when they make a purchase the sellers typically vary their prices over time charging a high price in most periods but occasionally cutting the price to sell to a large group of customers with a low reservation price in some equilibria all stores lower their price at the same time and to the same level

the economic effects of energy price shocks large fluctuations in energy prices have been a distinguishing characteristic of the u s economy since the 1970s turmoil in the middle east rising energy prices in the u s and evidence of global warming recently have reignited interest in the link between energy prices and economic performance this paper addresses a number of the key issues in this debate what are energy price shocks and where do they come from how responsive is energy demand to changes in energy prices how do consumers expenditure patterns evolve in response to energy price shocks how do energy price shocks affect u s real output inflation and stock prices why do energy price increases seem to cause recessions but energy price decreases do not seem to cause expansions why has there been a surge in the price of oil in recent years why has this new energy price shock not caused a recession so far have the effects of energy price shocks waned since the 1980s and if so why as the paper demonstrates it is critical to account for the endogeneity of energy prices and to differentiate between the effects of demand and supply shocks in energy markets when answering these questions

single factor heath jarrow morton term structure models based on markov spot interest rate dynamics this paper considers the class of heath jarrow morton term structure models where the spot interest rate is markov and the term structure at time t is a function of time maturity and the spot interest rate at time t a representation for this class of models is derived and i show that the functional forms of the forward rate volatility structure and the initial forward rate curve cannot be arbitrarily chosen i provide necessary and sufficient conditions indicating which combinations of these functional forms are allowable i also derive a partial differential equation representation of the term structure dynamics that does not require explicit modeling of both the market price of risk and the drift term for the spot interest rate process using the analysis presented in this paper a class of intertemporal term structure models is derived

dynamic models of the term structure in the past 25 years tremendous progress has been made in modeling the dynamics of the term structure of interest rates which play an instrumental role in determining prices and hedging portfolios of fixed income derivative securities this article reviews the theoretical development of the dynamic models of the default free term structure and their applications in pricing interest rate options classic models sometimes termed equilibrium models and their multifactor extensions are outlined these models provide clear economic intuitions connecting the term structure with economic fundamentals they also lay a foundation for the framework of the arbitrage models that price interest rate derivatives on the basis of the market prices of bonds this framework has been expanded and enriched by recent advances in directly modeling observable market rates through the market models and in incorporating an internally consistent correlation structure through the infinite dimensional models

bond pricing and the term structure of interest rates a discrete time approximation this paper studies the binomial approximation to the continuous trading term structure model of heath jarrow and morton 1987 the discrete time approximation makes the original methodology accessible to a wider audience and provides a computational proce dure necessary for calculating the contingent claim values derived in the continuous time paper this paper also extends and generalizes ho and lee s 1986 model to include multiple random shocks to the forward rate process and to include an analysis of continu ous time limits the generalization provides insights into the limitations of the existing empirical implementation of ho and lee s model

a multifactor spot rate model for the pricing of interest rate derivatives we propose a multifactor model in which the spot rate libor follows a lognormal process with a stochastic conditional mean under the risk neutral measure in addition to the spot rate factor the second factor is related to the premium of the first futures rate over the spot libor similarly the third factor is related to the premium of the second futures rate over the first futures rate we calibrate the model to the initial term structure of futures rates and to the implied volatilities of interest rate caplets we then apply the model to price interest rate derivatives such as european and bermudan style swaptions and yieldspread options the model can be employed to price more complex interest rate derivatives such as path dependent derivatives or multi currency dependent derivatives because of its markovian property

a cyclical square root model for the term structure of interest rates this paper presents a cyclical square root model for the term structure of interest rates assuming that the spot rate converges to a certain time dependent long term level this model incorporates the fact that the interest rate volatility depends on the interest rate level and specifies the mean reversion level and the interest rate volatility using harmonic oscillators in this way we incorporate a good deal of flexibility and provide a high analytical tractability under these assumptions we compute closed form expressions for the values of different fixed income and interest rate derivatives finally we analyze the empirical performance of the cyclical model versus that proposed in cox et al 1985 and show that it outperforms this benchmark providing a better fitting to market data

pricing contingent claims under interest rate and asset price risk this paper presents a general framework for pricing contingent claims under interest rate and asset price uncertainty the framework extends ho and lee s 1986 valuation framework by allowing not only future interest rates but also future asset prices to depend on the current term structure of interest rates the approach is shown to provide risk neutral valuation relationships that are consistent with the initial term structure of interest rates and can be applied to valuation of a broad class of assets including stock options convertible bonds and junk bonds

pricing interest rate derivative securities this article shows that the one state variableinterest rate models of vasicek 1977 and cox ingersoll and ross 1985b can be extended sothat they are consistent with both the current termstructure of interest rates and either the currentvolatilities of all spot interest rates or the currentvolatilities of all forward interest rates theextended vasicek model is shown to be very tracta ble analytically the article compares option pricesobtained using the extended vasicek model withthose obtained using a number of other models

are college graduates more responsive to distant labor market opportunities abstract are highly educated workers better at locating in areas with high labor demand to answer this question i use three decades of u s census data to estimate a mcfadden style model of residential location choice i test for education differentials in the likelihood that young workers reside in states experiencing positive labor demand shocks at the time these workers entered the labor market i find effects of changes in state labor demand on college graduate location choice that are several times greater than for high school graduates nevertheless medium run wage effects of entry labor market conditions for college graduates equal or exceed those of less educated workers

durable goods monopoly with entry of new consumers this paper analyzes a model of a dynamic monopolist who produces at constant unit cost each period a new cohort of consumers enters the market each entering cohort is identical consumers within a cohort have different tastes for the good my main results are if players are sufficiently patient any positive average profit less than the maximum feasible level can be attained in a subgame perfect equilibrium in the subset of subgame perfect equilibria in which players use stationary strategies the seller cannot make sales at prices significantly greater than the lowest willingness to pay when period length goes to zero and the seller attains the maximum profit when commitment is feasible by charging the same static monopoly price in every period this paper analyzes a model of a dynamic monopolist who operates in a market in which there is a regular flow of new consumers the seller produces a durable good at constant unit cost each period a new cohort of consumers enters the market consumers wish to buy exactly one unit of the item but are willing to wait resales are not allowed each entering cohort is identical

sales and consumer inventory temporary price reductions sales are common for many goods and naturally result in a large increase in the quantity sold we explore whether the data support the hypothesis that these increases are at least partly due to demand anticipation at low prices consumers store for future consumption this effect if present has broad economic implications we test the predictions of an inventory model using scanner data with two years of household purchases the results are consistent with an inventory model and suggest that static demand estimates may overestimate price sensitivity

a cointegration study of the efficiency of the us treasury strips market one theoretical implication of cointegration according to granger 1986 is that asset prices in an efficient market cannot be cointegrated using price data on us treasury strips with maturities from 2 15 1997 to 8 15 2015 it is found that a set of three strips series is often cointegrated in addition by setting up a costless hedge portfolio from three strips with three different maturities it is found that the hedge portfolio is often stationary and thus arbitrage opportunities are likely to occur that is because the hedge portfolio is costless and stationary cash in can be done when the value of the hedge portfolio is either positive or negative however when taking liquidity tax effects and transaction costs into consideration these arbitrage profits would be unlikely hence it is concluded that the us treasury strips market is efficient

revenue management without commitment dynamic pricing and periodic flash sales a seller has a fixed number of goods to sell by a deadline at each time he posts a regular price and decides whether to hold a flash sale over time buyers privately enter the market and strategically time their purchases if a buyer does not purchase when she arrives she can pay an attention cost to recheck the regular price afterwards or she can wait for future flash sales where she may obtain a good at a discounted price in the unique markov perfect equilibrium the seller sporadically holds flash sales to lower the stock of goods a flash sale increases the willingness to pay of future buyers but decreases the willingness to pay of buyers who arrive early in the game when it is very likely that a buyer will obtain a good in a flash sale the seller holds a big initial flash sale for all but one unit of the good

pricing and promotions in asymmetric duopolies this paper develops a modeling framework for making promotions decisions in contrast to some of the prior research the framework explicitly models promotions its central feature is the view of promotions competition as a multistage game in which regular prices are chosen first followed by the choice of promotion depths and frequencies it is used to illustrate the nature of competition between a national brand and private label in equilibrium the national brand promotes to ensure that the private label does not try to attract consumers away from the national brand moreover the private label does not promote this equilibrium is also contrasted with varian s framework used by other researchers in which mixed strategy equilibrium prices are interpreted as promotions

discounting the distant future how much does model selection affect the certainty equivalent rate evaluating investment with long term consequences using discount rates that decline with the time horizon declining discount rates of ddrs means that future welfare changes are of greater consequence in present value terms recent work in this area has turned towards operationalising the theory and establishing a schedule of ddrs for use in cost benefit analysis using us data we make the following points concerning this transition i model selectionhas important implications for operationalising a theory of ddrs that depends upon uncertainty ii misspecification testing naturally leads to employing models that account for changes in the interest reat generating medanism lastly we provide an analysis of the policy implications of ddrs in the context of climate change for the us and show that the use of a state space model can increase valuations by 150 compared to conventional constant discounting

dealing temporary price cuts by seller as a buyer discrimination mechanism this paper is concerned with temporary price cuts deals sales and specials as a mechanism for the seller to price discriminate between buyers with different intensities of demand we analyze why a seller offers such price cuts which buyers take advantage of them and what the parameters are that determine the amount and frequency of the discount offered in the remainder of this section we briefly review the literature on price deals 1 in section ii simple models of buyer and seller behavior are developed and we show why and how a seller adopts a dealing strategy section iii summarizes the key implications of the model and indicates how the price discrimination hypothesis could be tested in practice section iv suggests possible extensions of the model finally section v gives our conclusions in the marketing literature the issue of who is deal prone has been extensively researched an explanation for temporary price cuts usually called deals sales or specials is provided we hypothesize that they are a mechanism that discriminates between more intense and less intense demanders we further hypothesize a positive relationship between demand elasticity and holding costs buyers with more intense demand with high holding costs are those who will be buying the product at its regular price the low holdingcost buyers take advantage of deals by forward buying the model is applicable to three relationships 1 manufacturer reseller where the reseller may be a wholesaler or a retailer 2 resellerreseller for example wholesaler retailer and 3 retailer consumer we are grateful to michael mussa and albert madansky for their comments we also benefited from comments made by the marketing faculty of the wharton school at a seminar where an earlier version of this paper was presented neil beckwith in particular is acknowledged 1 for a more detailed review of deals and similar pricecutting mechanisms e g mail in rebates cents off labels coupons etc see narsimhan 1982 chan 2 journal of business 1985 vol 58 no 3 1985 by the university of chicago all rights reserved 0021 9398185 5803 0004 01 50

pricing interest rate derivatives a general approach the relationship between affine stochastic processes and bond pricing equations in exponential term structure models has been well established we connect this result to the pricing of interest rate derivatives if the term structure model is exponential affine then there is a linkage between the bond pricing solution and the prices of many widely traded interest rate derivative securities our results apply to m factor processes with n diffusions and l jump processes the pricing solutions require at most a single numerical integral making the model easy to implement we discuss many options that yield solutions using the methods of the article

valuation of american call options on dividend paying stocks empirical tests abstract this paper examines the pricing performance of the valuation equation for american call options on stocks with known dividends and compares it with two suggested approximation methods the approximation obtained by substituting the stock price net of the present value of the escrowed dividends into the black scholes model is shown to induce spurious correlation between prediction error and 1 the standard deviation of stock return 2 the degree to which the option is in the money or out of the money 3 the probability of early exercise 4 the time to expiration of the option and 5 the dividend yield of the stock a new method of examining option market efficiency is developed and tested

hedge fund risk dynamics implications for performance appraisal accurate appraisal of hedge fund performance must recognize the freedom with which managers shift asset classes strategies and leverage in response to changing market conditions and arbitrage opportunities the standard measure of performance is the abnormal return defined by a hedge fund s exposure to risk factors if exposures are assumed constant when in fact they vary through time estimated abnormal returns may be incorrect we employ an optimal changepoint regression that allows risk exposures to shift and illustrate the impact on performance appraisal using a sample of live and dead funds during the period january 1994 through december 2005