expectations the exchange rate and the current account abstract a critical examination is undertaken of the relationship between the exchange rate and the current account in a small open economy theoretically the correlation between the exchange rate and the current account seems to be ambiguous in particular the association between movements in the exchange rate and the current account is likely to depend in an essential manner on the nature of exogenous disturbances affecting the two variables simultaneously lastly the question of the role of an optimal monetary policy and the choice of an exchange rate regime in an uncertain environment is raised

general equilibrium pricing of cpi derivatives we examine the issue of pricing forward futures and option contracts written on the consumer price index cpi the change of which is a measure of inflation affecting the economy traditional approaches postulate an exogenous process for the price level and then derive cpi derivatives prices by standard arbitrage arguments by contrast we build the general equilibrium of a continuous time monetary economy that is affected by both real and nominal shocks the price level and thus the inflation rate are found endogenously and solutions for the prices of cpi derivatives are obtained which are in closed form in a specialized version of the economy

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

structural changes in the demand for food in asia empirical evidence from taiwan many asian countries are expected to undergo structural transformations in their economies and rapid urbanization over the next 25 years the changes in tastes and lifestyles engendered by urban living are likely to have significant influences on food demand changes in marketing systems and occupational changes closely linked with increasing gnp per capita also may influence the demand for food in this paper estimates presented for taiwan demonstrate that structural changes in food demand as distinguished from changes due to income and price effects have been significant factors driving the rapid changes in dietary patterns seen in east asia over the past three decades because most previous demand studies have ignored the possible influence of structural shifts which are highly correlated with increases in per capita income over time the effects of income on food demand have been overestimated

economic determinants of the nominal treasury yield curve abstract macroeconomic shocks account for most of the variability of nominal treasury yields inducing parallel shifts in the level of the yield curve we develop a new approach to identifying macroeconomic shocks that exploits model based empirical shock measures technology shocks shift yields through their effect on expected inflation and the term premium shocks to preferences for current consumption affect yields through their impact on real rates and expected inflation for both shocks the systematic reaction of monetary policy is an important transmission pathway we find little evidence that fiscal policy shocks are an important source of interest rate variability

sound taxation on the use of self declared value abstract in the 16th century foreign ships passing through the sound had to pay ad valorem taxes known as the sound dues to give skippers an incentive to declare the true value of their cargo the danish crown reserved the right to purchase it at the declared value we show that this rule does not induce truth telling but does allow the authorities to effectively implement a given tax rate

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

china s food economy to the twenty first century supply demand and trade this paper accounts for the structural changes now taking place in china and suggests that china is not likely to become either an enormous importer or exporter of grain ultimately though china s grain balances will depend on decisions made by chinese policymakers rather than natural resource constraints p v this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

incentive contracts and competitive bidding an increasing segment of economic activity is taking place in nonmarket situations in which economic agents act outside the traditional markets or create markets to deal with specific resource allocation problems one such problem involves the selection by a buyer of a contractor using a competitive bidding process competitive bidding is used extensively by the government for the selection of suppliers of goods and services and for the sale of resources such as offshore oil leases firms may use competitive bidding for the selection of certain suppliers of factor inputs and may attempt to sell certain products in markets in which competitive price quoting is the established market mechanism this paper is concerned with a bidding process in which a firm has an opportunity to bid on a project under the terms of an incentive contract incentive contracts

implications of trade reform for agricultural markets in northeast asia a korean example trade policy reform in the 1990s increased import access for agricultural products into japan south korea and other countries of asia one of the most significant developments concerns rice markets in this region because of political sensitivity japan and south korea were allowed to postpone tariffication on rice under the uruguay round ur gatt agreement 4 in return south korea provided more than the expected tariff reductions for some other commodities while japan agreed to accelerate quantitative access for rice in recent decades northeast asian markets have been comparatively open to wheat feed grains and cotton imports but mostly closed for rice with no

optimum consumption and portfolio rules with money as an asset this article generalizes merton s optimum consumption and portfolio rules in continuous time by introducing money as a capital asset and allowing for uncertain inflation assuming that prices are log normally distributed a three funds theorem is derived and the introduction of money is shown not to change the form of the standard inflation adjusted capm but to change the market price of risk the individual s consumption portfolio problem is completely solved under uncertain inflation if his utility function is iso elastic in its arguments comparative statics are used to assess the influence of changes in exogenous parameters on the individual s optimal rules

international asset pricing with time varying risk premia abstract recent empirical evidence that forward exchange rates are biased predictors of future spot rates can also be interpreted as evidence against the hypothesis of a constant risk premium consequently reconciliation of this evidence with efficient international capital markets requires the existence of time varying risk premia this paper modifies kouri s 1977 asset pricing model to allow time varying exected returns on assets eliminates the assumption of a risk free real asset and derives the characteristics of the risk premia in the forward market as well as the equilibrium yield relationships among the equities and riskless nominal bonds of all countries

demand for meat and dairy products by turkish households a bayesian censored system approach we extend the tobit censored linear equation system procedure to utility theoretic demand functions along with a mapping mechanism to impose the adding up restriction implied by consumer utility maximization theory a theoretical restriction very often ignored in previous empirical studies with censored demand systems in this context the bayesian markov chain monte carlo mcmc procedure is applied to the censored linear approximate almost ideal demand system laids for 12 food products using data from the turkish household expenditure survey all own price elasticities are negative and expenditure elasticities positive uncompensated own price elasticities for rural households are generally much higher than those for their urban peers though demand for most food products are own price elastic for both types of households the differential patterns in demand elasticities between urban and rural households become even more evident almost twice as relatively more expensive foodstuffs are consumed showing that accessibilities to alternative products have made rural turkish households more cognizant toward price changes in foods household characteristics play a key role in food expenditures notably so in urban areas and regional and seasonal differences are also present

the reaction of spot and forward rates to new information abstract this paper examines the impact of new information on the term structure of exchange rates in particular the response of spot and forward exchange rates to anticipated and unanticipated weekly u s and canadian money growth announcements and the speed of adjustment of the foreign exchange market to these announcements are investigated the results indicate that the unanticipated component of the announced changes in the u s money supply has an immediate negative effect on the foreign value of the u s dollar this is entirely consistent with the assetmarket theory of exchange rate determination that postulates that exchange rates immediately adjust to reflect new information the response of the forward market however appears to be weaker lending support to the overshooting hypothesis

causality and correlations of output and nominal variables in a real business cycle model abstract a dynamic general equilibrium economy in which output is exogenous with respect to money is calibrated and simulated following a procedure commonly used in the real business cycle literature it is then confronted with key comovement patterns of output and nominal variables in post war u s time series data the model economy performs well in matching second moment patterns involving output money and price the model economy with its embedded reverse causation from output to money also provides the means for carrying out a probabilistic appraisal of the observed money to output granger causality in u s data repeated applications of the granger causality test to simulated data lead to the rinding that money causes output more often than expected

impact of eliminating government interventions on china s rice sector abstract china s economy has undergone fundamental changes since 1978 agriculture industry and services are being transformed into market economies marketing and domestic trade have also been reformed to take into account regional comparative advantages the government however still controls input supply and output procurement to some extent china is currently negotiating with the gatt in regard to gaining membership conditions for china s reentering the gatt are to eliminate the government interventions on domestic production and consumption and international trade this may affect china s comparative advantages in international markets and therefore may result in changes in the structure of imports and exports will china continue to export rice or will it start to import rice under free trade and if china continues to export how much will china export this paper attempts to model the potential effects of eliminating all government interventions on china s rice sector we construct a rice industry model to facilitate our analysis the model has three components i e supply demand and price linkages the estimated results are consistent with theory and are evaluated using several techniques results from model validation indicate that both static and dynamic models are reasonable and can be used to simulate effects of various government policies simulations are conducted to project china s rice economy to the year 2000 two scenarios are compared 1 continued current policy and 2 elimination of all government interventions eliminating all government interventions would increase production stocks and exports domestic consumption would decline due to the higher domestic prices from eliminating government subsidies on rice consumption china would export more than 1 6 million metric tonnes of milled rice if there were no government interventions in the year 2000

asset pricing implications of a new keynesian model to match the stylised facts of goods and labour markets the canonical new keynesian model augments the optimising neoclassical growth model with nominal and real rigidities we ask what the implications of this type of model are for asset prices using a second order numerical solution to the model we examine bond and equity returns the equity risk premium and the behaviour of the real and nominal term structure we catalogue the factors that are most important for determining the size of risk premia and the slope and level of the yield curve in a world of technology shocks only increasing the degree of real rigidities raises risk premia and increasing nominal rigidities reduces risk premia in a world of monetary policy shocks only both real and nominal rigidities raise risk premia the results indicate that the implications of the new keynesian model for average asset returns depend critically on the

risk aversion and plant size theory and application to tar sands oil plants motivated by canadian tar sands oil plants we investigate the dependence of plant size on various parameters for a risk averse firm assuming that construction lead time is increasing in size we show that optimal plant size decreases with risk aversion increases in mean price and decreases in price uncertainty if the firm s share in the plant is above optimal we show that plant size increases as the share is decreased thus risk sharing can offset the effect of risk aversion on the optimal plant size

international portfolio diversification with estimation risk international portfolio diversification has long been advocated as a way of enhancing average returns while reducing portfolio risk for the investor who considers diversifying into foreign securities this proposition however relies on the assumption that the required inputs to the classical mean variance analysis are known with certainty typically expected returns variances and covariances are simply replaced by their ex post sample values and the optimal portfolio is derived without mentioning the uncertainty inherent in these parameter values but the rational investor should take this uncertainty into account when forming expectations and probably will consider estimators that are less subject to estimation error than the classical sample mean this paper investigates alternative estimators of expected returns and their implications for the alleged gains from diversification an important observation is the crucial influence that errors in estimating expected returns have on portfolio analysis a closer examiprevious studies of international portfolio diversification have relied on ex post meanvariance analysis without considering the problem of estimation risk typically past averages are substituted for expected returns and no allowance is made for the uncertainty inherent in these parameter values first i demonstrate the shortcomings of such an approach and second i investigate another method of estimating expected returns initially proposed by stein by shrinking the sample averages toward a common mean i find that the out of sample performance of the optimal portfolio is substantially increased one of the implications of this method is that the classical conclusions vastly overestimate the possible gains in average returns instead benefits from diversification are more likely to accrue from a reduction in risk this paper draws on part of my dissertation at the university of chicago i am grateful to arnold zellner michael mussa george constantinides and especially john bilson for useful discussions and comments numerous improvements were also suggested by the referee this research received the generous financial support of the college interuniversitaire d etudes doctorales dans les sciences du management

closed form solutions for term structure derivatives with log normal interest rates we derive a unified model that gives closed form solutions for caps and floors written on interest rates as well as puts and calls written on zero coupon bonds the crucial assumption is that simple interest rates over a fixed finite period that matches the contract which we want to price are log normally distributed moreover this assumption is shown to be consistent with the heath jarrow morton model for a specific choice of volatility closed form solutions for interest rate derivatives in particular caps floors and bond options have been obtained by a number of authors for markovian term structure models with normally distributed interest rates or alternatively log normally distributed bond prices see for example jamshidian 1989 1991a heath jarrow and morton 1992 brace and musiela 1994 geman el karoui and rochet 1995 these models support black scholes type formulas most frequently used by practitioners for pricing bond options and swaptions unfortunately these models imply negative interest rates with positive probabilities and hence they are not arbitrage free in an economy with opportunities for riskless and costless storage of money briys crouhy and schobel 1991 apply the gaussian framework to derive closed form solutions for caps floors and european zero coupon bond options to exclude the influence of negative forward rates on the pricing of zero coupon bond options they introduce an additional boundary condition as shown by rady and sandmann 1994 these pricing formulas are only supported by a term structure model with an absorbing boundary for the forward rate at zero where the absorbing probability is not negligible which for a term structure model is a quite problematic assumption

asset pricing under the quadratic class we identify and characterize a class of term structure models where bond yields are quadratic functions of the state vector we label this class the quadratic class and aim to lay a solid theoretical foundation for its future empirical application we consider asset pricing in general and derivative pricing in particular under the quadratic class we provide two general transform methods in pricing a wide variety of fixed income derivatives in closed or semi closed form we further illustrate how the quadratic model and the transform methods can be applied to more general settings i introduction we identify and characterize a class of term structure models where bond yields are quadratic functions of the markov process we label this class the quadratic class and aim to lay a solid theoretical foundation for its future empirical application we identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for the quadratic class and consider the general asset pricing problem under the quadratic framework in particular we propose two transform methods to price a wide variety of interest rate derivatives in closed or semi closed form we further illustrate how the pricing methods can be applied to more general settings examples include option pricing for currencies or stocks with quadratic stochastic volatilities our interests in the quadratic class come mainly from concerns on empirical application recent empirical research within the affine framework of duffie and kan 1996 indicates an inherent tension between i delivering good empirical performance in matching salient features of the interest rate data and ii excluding positive probabilities of having negative interest rates for example backus telmer and wu 1999 and dai and singleton 2000 find that incorporating gaussian state variables in the affine framework significantly increases the flexibility for model design and greatly improves its empirical performance in capturing the conditional dynamics of interest rates dai and singleton 2001

asset pricing in a monetary economy with heterogeneous beliefs in this paper we shed new light on the role of monetary policy in asset pricing by examining the case in which investors have heterogeneous expectations about future monetary policy this case is realistic because central banks are typically less than perfectly open about their intentions accordingly surveys of economists reveal that they frequently disagree in their expectations under heterogeneity in beliefs investors place speculative bets against each other on the evolution of the money supply and as a result the sharing of wealth in the economy evolves stochastically employing a continuous time equilibrium model we show that these fluctuations majorly affect the prices of all assets as well as inflation our model could help explain some empirical puzzles in particular we find that the volatility of bond yields and stock market volatility could be significantly increased by the heterogeneity in beliefs a conclusion supported by our empirical analyses this paper was accepted by wei xiong finance

equilibrium positive interest rates a unified view this article develops precise connections among two general approaches to building interest rate models a general equilibrium approach using a pricing kernel and the heath jarrow and morton framework based on specifying forward rate volatilities and the market price of risk the connections exploit the observation that a pricing kernel is uniquely determined by its drift through these connections we provide for any arbitrage free term structure model a representative consumer real production economy supporting that term structure model in equilibrium we put particular emphasis on models in which interest rates remain positive by modeling the dynamics of the drift of the pricing kernel we construct a new family of markovian positive interest rate models article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

risk premia and the sources of inflation the process of inflation is associated not only with a rising general price level but also with uncertainty about its rate of change it is the latter aspect of inflation that may give rise to risk premia on nominal assets as compared with a real safe asset a possible framework for analyzing the structure of risk premia under inflationary conditions is the well known capital asset pricing model capm developed by sharpe and lintner indeed a number of papers have recently dealt with these risk premia by means of the capm framework or some close variety of it we may mention the works of roll 9 sarnat 10 fischer 4 chen and boness 1 and friend landskroner and losq 5 1 the capm and its extentions to conditions of inflation use a microeconomic approach in a partial equilibrium analysis of the risk premia a basic feature of the foregoing literature is the implicit treatment of inflation as exogenous alternatively there is no theory to relate the real return on money to be denoted 7r to the other variables in the capm formulation this leads to two important shortcomings first the covariance of 7r with the rates of return appears as completely arbitrary second since x was considered as exogenous the authors did not consider the need to include in their models the government s nominal transfer pay

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

management of foreign exchange risk a review article this paper reviews the literature on foreign exchange risk management ferm which has burgeoned during the last decade scholars and practioners emerging interest in foreign exchange risk management was spurred by the advent of fluctuating exchange rates in the early seventies as well as by the pronouncement of the infamous fasb statement no 8 in 1976 which laid down unambiguous guidelines for consolidating financial statements of multinational corporations a normative rather than a market view of foreign exchange risk management is taken and accordingly the author reviews first the two key informational inputs necessary for any foreign exchange risk management program forecasting exchange rates and measuring exposure to exchange risk available decision models for handling transaction and translation exposures are reviewed next a concluding section identifies gaps in the existing literature and suggests directions for future research

currency and credit markets abstract in this paper we focus on two aspects of the relationship between exchange rates and interest rates which have not been widely discussed first the extent to which the forward premia discount in one market can be used to predict the speculative return in the other second the extent to which unanticipated changes in the speculative returns are correlated across markets so that positions in one market can be hedged using positions in the other our results demonstrate that these two linkages are also important factors behind the time variation in speculative risk premia

rice in asia is it becoming an inferior good comment from pooled time series cross section data from 1961 to 1985 for three groups of countries classified by changes in per capita rice consumption levels rice consumption per capita was specified as a function of per capita gross domestic product gdp in real terms and the ratio of world price of rice to wheat because income elasticities tend to be lower at higher income levels a log inverse log model was adopted and ridge regression was employed to minimize multicollinearity problems between iny and y the results indicated that income elasticities have significantly declined moreover income elasticities are negative in half of the countries studied leading to the conclusion that rice is becoming an inferior good in asia the fact that income elasticities for rice and other

the effects of inflation on real interest rates one of the most obvious facts of recent monetary history is that high inflation is associated with high nominal interest rates this association has been interpreted by many as supporting a superneutrality hypothesis that an increase in inflation will not affect real interest rates in the long run however the bulk of the evidence contradicts superneutrality beginning with irving fisher 1896 1930 most empirical investigations have found that fully anticipated inflation has less than a unit effect on nominal interest rates and thus reduces real interest rates even in the longest of runs this has been shown under the assumption that expectations are formed rationally douglas pearce 1979 that they take the form of an arbitrary distributed lag on past inflation rates fisher 1930 william gibson 1970 or that they are accurately represented by the livingstone expectations data pearce kajal lahiri 1976 lawrence summers 1983 attempted to measure the long run effect without an explicit theory of expectations regressing long swings in various nominal interest rates against long swings in inflation over various subintervals from 1860 to 1979 he found coefficients consistently less than unity for the post world war ii era as a whole the coefficients were in the range of 0 5 to 0 75 with standard deviations of 0 08 to 0 33 a few studies have found coefficients close to unity william yohe and denis karnosky 1969 martin feldstein and otto eckstein 1970 gibson 1972 lucas but as several authors have observed thomas sargent 1976 robert shiller 1980 john wood 1981 summers these findings are limited to a particular period of u s history approximately 1953 71 furthermore even a unitcoefficient would contradict superneutrality of the after tax real interest rate which would require a coefficient substantially greater than unity even taking into account the other inflation distortions in the tax system summers calculated that the coefficient ought to lie in the range of 1 3 to 1 5 far higher than observed these empirical findings pose a challenge to traditional monetary theory much of which implies that superneutrality should hold at least approximately for example the model of miguel sidrauski 1967 implies that the real interest rate should equal the marginal product of capital which in the long run should equal the representative household s marginal rate of time preference if this rate of time preference is a constant then in particular it will be independent of the rate of inflation if it is positively related to the household s wealth or utility then inflation can reduce the marginal product of capital somewhat through what are commonly called mundell tobin effects that is higher inflation can reduce the demand for real balances which reduces real wealth which lowers the rate of time preference and leads to further capital accumulation 2 but this real balance effect on saving is commonly recognized to be too small to make department of economics social science centre university of western ontario london canada n6a 5c2 we are grateful to charles adams norman cameron john chilton jacob frenkel david laidler ben mccallum baldev raj brad reid jack weldon john whalley ron winrck and two anonymous referees for helpful discussions and comments on earlier drafts all errors are attributable to transaction costs robert lucas 1980 finds empirical support for the hypothesis which he calls one of the central implications of the quantity theory of money it has also been adopted by a wide range of more eclectic economists as evidenced by its endorsement in two of the most popular macroeconomics textbooks rudiger dornbusch and stanley fischer 1981 pp 454 58 robert j gordon 1978 pp 289 91 2these implications of variable time preference can be drawn almost immediately from the work of hirofumi uzawa 1968 a graphical analysis is presented by david laidler 1969b who focuses on the logically equivalent question of the effects of paying interest on money

currency prices terms of trade and interest rates a general equilibrium asset pricing cash in advance approach currency prices terms of trade and interest rates a general equilibrium asset pricing cash in advance approach

optimal value declaration in buy sell situations buy sell shotgun clauses call for a partner who wishes to discontinue a partnership to declare a value for the business and for the other partner to then buy her out or sell to her at this value the resulting decision model for an expected utility maximizing individual who is uncertain of the business valuation by the partner is analyzed this model is also applicable to a divide and choose fair division method as well as some historical tax customs schemes and is more general than comparable bidding auctions models after showing that the optimal declaration is always between the declarer s valuation and the fractile of the subjective distribution corresponding to the share owned we show that the optimal declaration is always increasing in the valuation and for a risk neutral declarer also increasing in the share owned we prove that the more risk averse the declarer the closer is the optimal declaration to the valuation and the higher the probability that the partner who values the busine

short term interest rates as subordinated diffusions in this article we cbaracterize and estimate the process for short term interest rates using federal funds interest rate data we presume that we are observing a discrete time sample of a stationary scalar diffusion we concentrate on a class of models in whicb the local volatility elasticity is constant and the drift has aflexible specufication to accommodate missing observations and to break the link between economic time and calendar time we model the sampling scheme as an increasing process that is not directly observed we propose and implement two new methods for estimation we find evidence for a volatility elasticity between one and onehalf and two when interest rates are high local mean reversion is smaul and the mechanism for inducing stationarity is the increased volatility of the diffusion process

an intertemporal general equilibrium model of asset prices this paper develops a continuous time general equilibrium model of a simple but complete economy and uses it to examine the behavior of asset prices in this model asset prices and their stochastic properties are determined endogenously one principal result is a partial differential equation which asset prices must satisfy the solution of this equation gives the equilibrium price of any asset in terms of the underlying real variables in the economy in this paper we develop a general equilibrium asset pricing model for use in applied research an important feature of the model is its integration of real and financial markets among other things the model endogenously determines the stochastic process followed by the equilibrium price of any financial asset and shows how this process depends on the underlying real variables the model is fully consistent with rational expectations and maximizing behavior on the part of all agents our framework is general enough to include many of the fundamental forces affecting asset markets yet it is tractable enough to be specialized easily to produce specific testable results furthermore the model can be extended in a number of straightforward ways consequently it is well suited to a wide variety of applications for example in a companion paper cox ingersoll and ross 7 we use the model to develop a theory of the term structure of interest rates many studies have been concerned with various aspects of asset pricing under uncertainty the most relevant to our work are the important papers on intertemporal asset pricing by merton 19 and lucas 16 working in a continuous time framework merton derives a relationship among the equilibrium expected rates of return on assets he shows that when investment opportunities are changing randomly over time this relationship will include effects which have no analogue in a static one period model lucas considers an economy with homogeneous individuals and a single consumption good which is produced by a number of processes the random output of these processes is exogenously determined and perishable assets are defined as claims to all or a part of the output of a process and the equilibrium determines the asset prices our theory draws on some elements of both of these papers like merton we formulate our model in continuous time and make full use of the analytical tractability that this affords the economic structure of our model is somewhat similar to that of lucas however we include both endogenous production and

uncertain inflation exchange rates and bond yields abstract the yields on international bonds are affected by exchange rate risk and country risk in addition to factors such as default and duration that are relevant in the pricing of domestic bonds this paper constructs a theory of bond yields in a single period framework with the risk of nominal bonds being endogenous to the model the behaviour of the monetary authority is modelled explicitly and is shown to be a crucial determinant of the risk of nominal bonds a distinction is made between the risk of default in the usual sense and the risk of being paid in currency which is worth less in real terms with the type of risk that is relevant in a particular case depending on the monetary policy followed the implications of results for exchange rate risk are also explored in a world where purchasing power parity holds

food demand studies in sub saharan africa a survey of empirical evidence abstract the recent empirical food demand studies on sub saharan africa show significant advances in demand specification and methodology especially in the application of less restrictive and theoretically consistent flexible functional forms the findings to date establish some broad patterns on effect of income household demography and life cycle location and prices on food demand patterns however the numerical values of the demand estimates are less generalizable because of an insufficient number of data points to separate the true demand component from other confounding factors which are linked to differences in modeling and estimation of demand relations the priority for future research is to generate sufficiently detailed demand estimates that have a high utility for disaggregated policy analysis but are based on a theoretically consistent and comparable methodology

short rate nonlinearities and regime switches abstract using non parametric estimation methods various authors have shown distinct non linearities in the drift and volatility function of the us short rate which are inconsistent with standard affine term structure models we document how a regime switching model with state dependent transition probabilities between regimes can replicate the patterns found by the non parametric studies to do so we use data from the uk and germany in addition to us data and include term spreads in some of our models we also examine the drift and volatility function of the term spread

corrections and additions to a nonlinear equilibrium model of the term structure of interest rates abstract longstaff 1989 introduces a new process for the short rate of interest he claims to derive the zero coupon bond pricing formula and state transition density for his model we demonstrate that longstaff s pricing formula is not the solution to the pricing problem which he poses the source of his error is a failure to properly account for a boundary condition we introduce a new model economy and derive a new endogenous interest rate process and find the green s function and the price of a zero coupon bond for our model economy

westernization of asian diets and the transformation of food systems implications for research and policy abstract rapid economic and income growth urbanization and globalization are leading to a dramatic shift of asian diets away from staples and increasingly towards livestock and dairy products vegetables and fruit and fats and oils while the diversification of diets away from the traditional dominance of rice with rising incomes is expected and observed current food consumption patterns are showing signs of convergence towards a western diet the diet transition is characterized by increased consumption of wheat temperate fruit and vegetables and high protein and energy dense food globalization and the consequent global interconnectedness of the urban middle class is the driving force behind the convergence of diets the rapid spread of global supermarket chains and fast food restaurants is reinforcing the above trends the growing demand for diet diversity cannot be met solely by the traditional food supply chain it requires the modernisation of the food retail sector and the vertical integration of the food supply chain in effect linking the consumers plate to the farmers plow as a consequence asian agriculture is on an irreversible path leading away from its traditional pre occupation with cereal crop production especially rice towards a production system that is becoming increasingly commercialized and diversified this paper describes the determinants and trends in the diversification and westernization of asian diets implications of the evolving demand trends for food supply and retail systems are presented the paper discusses the prospects for small farmer participation in the emerging food supply system with a particular emphasis on asian rice production systems finally the paper considers emerging challenges for food policy small holder welfare and agricultural research and development priorities

the forward exchange rate and macroeconomics abstract this paper discusses the conditions under which a risk premium is incorporated in the forward exchange rate a new condition for the existence of a risk premium is proposed we show that earlier models of the risk premium which emphasize either the role of net foreign investment or of the relative supplies of outside assets are not suited for assessing the effects of changes in macroeconomic policy

expectation puzzles time varying risk premia and dynamic models of the term structure abstract linear projections of returns on the slope of the yield curve have contradicted the implications of the traditional expectations theory this paper shows that these findings are not puzzling relative to a large class of richer dynamic term structure models specifically we match all the key empirical findings reported by fama and bliss 1987 american economic review 77 4 680 692 and campbell and shiller 1991 review of economic studies 58 495 514 among others within large subclasses of affine and quadratic gaussian term structure models additionally we show that certain risk premium adjusted projections of changes in yields on the slope of the yield curve recover the coefficients of unity predicted by the models key to this matching are parameterizations of the market prices of risk that let the risk factors affect the market prices of risk directly and not only through factor volatilities the risk premiums have a simple form consistent with fama s findings on the predictability of forward rates and are also shown to be consistent with interest rate feedback rules used by a monetary authority in setting monetary policy

on the effects of sterilized intervention an analysis of weekly data abstract as the recent empirical studies surveyed here illustrate it is very difficult to demonstrate that the exchange rate risk premium depends through a portfolio balance channel on the currency composition of outside assets the existence of a portfolio balance effect is a necessary condition for sterilized intervention to be a genuinely independent tool of monetary policy this paper studies u s canadian data and attempts to improve on earlier studies by using higher frequency weekly data and by implementing an appropriate instrumental variables technique 2s2sls however we still fail to detect evidence of a portfolio balance effect

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

recent advances in estimating term structure models in the past 10 years increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques have been applied to the estimation of increasingly complex models of the term structure of interest rates in reviewing this literature we highlight the facts that have been established and the key unresolved issues the data indicate that within a wide range of interest rates mean reversion in rates is at best weak whether mean reversion is stronger for very high or very low levels of rates is an unresolved issue the absolute volatility of rates increases as the level of rates increases but the strength of this effect and the role and nature of either stochastic volatility or regime switching components in rates are still unclear unfortunately these unresolved issues have important implications for fixed income option pricing and risk measurement including value at risk calculations

the purchasing power of money and nominal interest rates a re examination while it has been known for some time that under uncertainty the original version of the fisher hypothesis is not precisely correct empirical researchers have largely ignored this fact such an omission has possibly resulted in erroneous conclusions concerning other hypotheses most notably the impact of prices on the real economy this paper clarifies some of the previous interpretations of the existing empirical literature and provides a theoretical version of the relation between prices and interest rates empirical tests based on both the livingston survey data and data from time series forecasting models provide support for the fisher effect and the hypothesis that only covariance risk is priced in the treasury bill market one of the basic hypotheses concerning rationality in financial markets is based on statements generally attributed to fisher 18 fisher argued that the nominal or money rate of return on an asset should compensate an investor for his or her required real rate of return and changes in the purchasing power of money for the uncertainty case fisher replaced known purchasing power changes with the expected inflation rate whereas the fisher relationship under certainty is well defined his basic theorem under uncertainty is not precise as fama 15 has argued it is changes in the purchasing power of money not the inflation rate that should concern investors under uncertainty the expected value of one is not by jensen s inequality the inverse of the expected value of the other moreover fama and farber 16 grauer and litzenberger 20 and benninga and protopapadakis 3 have shown that when investors are risk averse the fisher relationship will generally not hold even after adjustment has been made for the distinction between purchasing power changes and the inflation rate in particular these authors show that an adjustment must be made for the fact that the real rate of return on nominal bonds is random while these issues have been discussed in the theoretical literature they have largely been ignored in the empirical work on this topic given the fact that nominal rates do not seem to adjust as rapidly to price changes as fisher hypothesized numerous empirical researchers have expanded the basic fisher model in an attempt to explain this empirical anomaly these extensions include the incorporation of a inflation rate variability and the growth in real output

bond pricing and the term structure of interest rates a new methodology for contingent claims valuation this paper presents a unifying theory for valuing contingent claims under a stochastic term structure of interest rates the methodology based on the equivalent martingale measure technique takes as given an initial forward rate curve and a family of potential stochastic processee for its subsequent movements a no arbitrage condition restricts this family of processes yielding valuation formulae for interest rate sensitive contingent claims which do not explicitly depend on the market prices of risk examples are provided to illustrate the key results in relation to the term structure of interest rates arbitrage pricing theory has two purposes the first is to price all zero coupon default free bonds of varying maturities from a finite number of economic fundamentals called state variables the second is to price all interest rate sensitive contingent claims taking as given the prices of the zero coupon bonds this paper presents a general theory and a unifying framework for understanding arbitrage pricing theory in this context of which all existing arbitrage pricing models are special cases in particular vasicek 1977 brennan and schwartz 1979 langetieg 1980 ball and torous 1983 ho and lee 1986 schaefer and schwartz 1987 and artzner and delbaen 1988 the primary contribution of this paper however is a new methodology for solving the second problem i e the pricing of interest rate sensitive contingent claims given the prices of all zero coupon bonds the methodology is new because i it imposes its stochastic structure directly on the evolution of the forward rate curve ii it does not require an inversion of the term structure to eliminate the market prices of risk from contingent claim values and iii it has a stochastic spot rate process with multiple stochastic factors influencing the term structure the model can be used to consistently price and hedge all contingent claims american or european on the term structure and it is derived from necessary and more importantly sufficient conditions for the absence of arbitrage the arbitrage pricing models of vasicek 1977 brennan and schwartz 1979 langetieg 1980 and artzner and delbaen 1988 all require an iformerly titled bond pricing and the term structure of interest rates a new methodology

money bonds and foreign exchange in the theory of finance capital markets provide securities which allow the ownership of productive assets to be allocated among investors according to their willingness to bear risk in exchange for return and independently of their tastes for the productive services provided by the assets this paper uses the theory of finance to study the role of money as a productive asset and the transformation of money into a portfolio asset true to its purpose the capital market provides securities nominal bonds that allow an allocation of the current services of the money supply according to its current productivity and without regard for its future purchasing power risk and an allocation of the future purchasing power risk of the money supply according to the willingness of investors to bear this risk in exchange for return and without regard for investor needs for the future transactions services of money in open

international currency substitution and the income velocity of money abstract this paper presents new empirical evidence on the degree to which international currency substitution destabilizes domestic money demand it also provides an explanation of some apparent discrepancies among previous empirical studies of currency substitution this explanation hinges on the distinction between the elasticity of currency substitution and the cross elasticity of money demand a large small value of one elasticity does not imply a large small value of the other a large cross elasticity is required for currency substitution to destabilize domestic money demand the empirical evidence presented here is consistent with the view that these cross elasticities are typically small

price uncertainty and the exchange rate risk premium abstract this paper develops a simple two country portfolio model of the exchange rate risk premium which incorporates price uncertainty in both countries it is shown how the risk premium depends on the world shares of outside assets and wealth as well as on the variance covariance matrix of prices and the exchange rate in particular when purchasing power parity holds the distribution of world wealth has no effect on equilibrium asset prices

pricing capital assets in an international setting an introduction this paper shows how differences across countries of 1 inflation rates 2 consumption baskets of investors and 3 investment opportunity sets of investors matter when one applies capital asset pricing models in an international setting in particular the fact that countries differ is shown to affect the portfolio held by investors the equilibrium expected returns of risky assets and the financial policies of firms

commodity own rates real interest rates and money supply announcements abstract this paper develops a measure of the real interest rate that is based on commodity own rates the rate at which one can contract to exchange units of a commodity today for units of the commodity in the future we use this measure to study the impact of money supply announcements on the real interest rate we find that money shocks have little effect on one and three month real interest rates however there is a strong positive relation between money shocks and six and twelve month real interest rates

monetary randomness and investment abstract this paper develops a neoclassical model in which the behavior of the money supply affects investment by affecting the real distribution of asset returns investment depends on wealthholders demand for capital a stochastic money growth rule influences portfolio choice by affecting the distribution of the inflation rate the variance of inflation matters to wealthholders because of the existence of assets with returns that are not indexed to changes in the price level money and bonds which are contracted in nominal terms in a rational expectations environment asset demands will thus be sensitive to the distribution of the money growth rate our principle conclusion is that an increase in the variance of the money growth rate lowers investment which complements tobin s 1965 result that an increase in the mean stimulates capital accumulation the paper also represents a step toward incorporating an asset market into a macroeconomic model in a manner which takes account of lucas 1976 criticism of econometric policy evaluation all variables in the model including asset return distributions are functions of technology preferences and the money supply rule further expectations are rational

food consumption in urban china an empirical analysis this paper examines consumption patterns of urban households in china using aggregated household consumption data a demand system comprising six commodities rice pork vegetables fish eggs and fruits is estimated using a two stage budgeting procedure which incorporates an almost ideal deamnd system aids in each stage elasticity estimates from the system are plausible and consistent with other relevant studies results from this study strengthen the evidence of the emergence of a large chinese market for non stable food the study provides rationale and basis for additional research into chinese food consumption especially processed food

household energy elasticities and policy implications for pakistan abstract this study estimates fuel expenditure and price elasticities of household fuels in pakistan the burning of biomass is harmful to health and the environment and may cause preventable morbidity and mortality it is important to investigate how households fuel choices are linked to prices so that governments can consider appropriate steps to enhance the consumption of clean fuels using three pooled cross sectional surveys from pakistan and applying the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids model we found that all fuel types except natural gas were price inelastic at the national level and for urban households in rural areas natural gas and lpg were found to be more price elastic compared to urban areas simple policy simulations based on our results suggest that in order to reduce indoor air pollution by encouraging the adoption of clean fuels lpg and piped natural gas governments should subsidies clean fuels rather than imposing taxes on solid fuels moreover in the case of pakistan a subsidy for lpg should be preferred over a subsidy for piped natural gas as it produces a more cost effective reduction in solid fuel use

forward foreign exchange rates expected spot rates and premia a signal extraction approach in this paper we implement a methodology to identify and measure premia in the pricing of forward foreign exchange that involves application of signal extraction techniques from the engineering literature diagnostic tests indicate that these methods are quite successful in capturing the essence of the time series properties of premium terms the estimated premium models indicate that premia show a certain degree of persistence over time and that more than half the variance in the forecast error that results from the use of current forward rates as predictors of future spot rates is accounted for by variation in premium terms the methodology can be applied straightforwardly to the measurement of unobservables in other financial markets there exists a growing body of empirical research on premia in the pricing of forward foreign exchange conditional on the hypothesis that the foreign exchange market is efficient or rational the existence of time varying premia has been documented in the literature by fama 6 hansen and hodrick 10 11 hodrick and srivastava 15 16 hsieh 171 and korajczyk 20 frankel 9 fails to identify such premia and domowitz and hakkio 51 obtain different results for different currencies

rural chinese food consumption the case of guangdong chinese consumer behavior is analyzed based on rural guangdong household survey data for most food items own price elasticities estimated with an aids model are inelastic commodity substitution due to relative price changes is small except in the case of grain commodities most responsive to expenditure changes are meats poultry fruits sweets and durable goods

nominal rigidity and monetary uncertainty in a small open economy temporary nominal rigidity is introduced into a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of a small open economy the foreign country is also modelled and is the closed economy counterpart of the domestic country we examine whether a small open economy is more vulnerable than a closed economy to uncertainty over its monetary policy a signal of an increase in future variability which was not previously foreseen as a risk by agents is shown to weaken the current exchange rate and boost current output in the small open economy in the equivalent closed economy it has no effect on current variables

a parametric nonlinear model of term structure dynamics recent nonparametric estimation studies pioneered by ait sahalia document that the diffusion of the short rate is similar to the parametric function r superscript 1 5 estimated by chan et al whereas the drift is substantially nonlinear in the short rate these empirical properties call into question the efficacy of the existing affine term structure models and beg for alternative models which admit the observed behavior this article presents such a model our model delivers closed form solutions for bond prices and a concave relationship between the interest rate and the yields we show that in empirical analyses our model outperforms the one factor affine models in both time series as well as cross sectional tests article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

trade in nominal assets monetary policy and price level and exchange rate risk in a previous paper trade in risky assets i have analyzed the pattern of international trade in risky real assets between barter economies relying on the law of comparative advantage and using autarky asset price differences to predict the pattern of asset trade in this paper the analysis is extended to international trade in nominal assets assets with returns paid in currencies between monetary economies the risk chracteristics of real returns on nominal assets depend on price level and exchange rate risk and therefore on monetary policy it is examined how different combinations of monetary policies and exchange rate regimes affect nominal assets return risk characteristics their autarky perices and hence their trade pattern when countries differ with respect to their outputs or their attitudes towards risk when world asset markets are incomplete different monetary policies and exchange rate regimes have dramatic effects on risk characteristics of home and foreign currency bonds and on the trade pattern in these assets as well as on aggregate capital and current accounts

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

flexible consumer demand systems and linear estimation food in india demand equations in real income and nominal prices can be obtained directly by differentiating a cost function in which output is replaced by real income this derivation is possible because recent advances show that certain index numbers provide close approximation to real income without knowledge of the utility function parameters three flexible functional forms corresponding to well known flexible cost functions were used to estimate food demand elasticities time series and cross sectional data from ten indian states for twenty years were used the estimates provide a complete set of expenditure price and cross price elasticities for four commodities some close substitutes

general equilibrium real and nominal interest rates we derive the general equilibrium short term real and nominal interest rates in a monetary economy affected by technological and monetary shocks and where the price level dynamics is endogenous assuming fairly general processes for technology and money supply we show that an inherent feature of our equilibrium is that any real variable dynamics in particular that of the short term real interest rate is driven by both monetary and real factors this money non neutrality is generic as it does not stem from any friction such as price stickiness or from a particular utility function non neutrality obtains because the ex ante cost of real money holdings is random due to inflation uncertainty we then analyze in depth a specialized version of this economy in which the state variables follow square root processes and the representative investor has a log separable utility function the short term nominal rate dynamics we obtain encompasses most of the dynamics present in the literature from vasicek and cir to recent quadratic and more generally non linear interest rate models moreover our results pave the way to several new nominal term structures

foreign exchange futures prices under fixed exchange rates abstract this paper develops three models for the determination of foreign exchange futures prices under fixed exchange rates and expectations of devaluation these models show that certain characteristics of futures prices behavior that have been used as proof of inefficiency may be present even if the market is efficient they also have several implications that are consistent with the observed behavior of mexican pesos futures prices

forward premia and risk premia in a simple model of exchange rate determination this paper develops the standard rational expectations model of exchange rate determination with risk premia taken as exogenous the exchange rate is equal to a weighted sum of all future values of the fundamentals and risk premia specifically if risk premia are percei ved to be temporary then their levels are negatively associated with rates of appreciation this finding is consistent in sign with the results from the conventional regression equation but the theory indicates that to obtain unbiased estimates errors in variables techniques must be employed plausible estimates for the money market parameters are found from canadian data copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

the effects of expenditure growth and urbanisation on food consumption in east asia a note on animal products abstract consumption functions for total animal derived food products were estimated for six east asian countries incorporation of urbanisation was found to make a significant contribution to the functions the urbanisation elasticities were always positive indicating that the process of urbanisation had a positive effect on the demand for animal food products the expenditure elasticities were also positive but often less than they would be if estimated from consumption functions that excluded the effects of urbanisation thus projections of consumption that ignore the influence of urbanisation may be biased

a model of international asset pricing under imperfect commodity arbitrage abstract this paper examines the effect of imperfect international commodity arbitrage i e violation of the law of one price modeled as the existence of non traded goods on the structure of purchasing power risk optimal portfolio rules of the risk averse investors and the equilibrium yield relationship among assets the major results of the paper include i there are two separate sources of purchasing power risk i e relative price risk and inflation risk relative price risk is specific to the country in which the investor resides ii in a world of n countries investors may hold n 1 hedge portfolios as vehicles to hedge against purchasing power risk facing different relative prices investors residing in different countries display divergent portfolio behavior iii in equilibrium investors are compensated in terms of excess return for bearing not only the systematic world market risk but also the systematic inflation and relative price risks

exchange rate variability and asset trade in popular discussion about the merits of different international monetary arrangements it is often maintained that increased exchange rate variability has a negative influence on international tra

effects of monetary disturbances on exchange rates with risk averse speculation abstract this paper develops a macroeconomic model in which domestic and foreign bonds are perfect substitutes on a covered basis but in which speculators are assumed to be risk averse we analyze the effects of various transitory and permanent disturbances on the economy and show how the existence of the risk premium known to exist under such conditions has important implications for macroeconomic behavior most of our attention is devoted to how the economy responds to temporary and permanent changes in the money and bond supplies and in the central bank s forward market position the effects of disturbances in the foreign price level and interest rate are also briefly discussed

rice in asia is it becoming an inferior good empirical results using time series and cross sectional data indicate that rice in asia is becoming an inferior good income elasticities declined and in some cases became negative between 1961 and 1985 in most of the fourteen asian countries studied accordingly domestic demand for rice in these countries is not likely to grow as rapidly as it has in the past as a consequence there is a potential for excess supplies of rice to develop in asia putting downward pressure on rice prices while governments in asian countries may need to adjust their rice policies in the future world rice suppliers may need to develop new markets for rice

optimal currency diversification for a class of risk averse international investors abstract in the framework of continuous time finance theory this paper derives the dynamic optimal consumption and portfolio rules for a risk averse international investor who consumes in fixed proportions goods produced in n different countries and holds the respective n currencies restricting the processes generating n currency prices and exchange rates to follow brownian motion optimal portfolios of eight major currencies are presented showing substantial departures from the expenditure shares and from purchasing power parity thus even under infinite risk aversion investors consuming only one good would hold a diversified currency portfolio

demand for cereal grains in asia the effect of urbanization abstract this paper analyzes the effects of urbanization on demand for cereal grains rice wheat and coarse grains in nine asian countries a complete demand system almost ideal demand system in linear form is estimated in two stages based on aggregate time series data from 1960 to 1988 in the high income countries i e japan and south korea urbanization was observed to significantly reduce demand for cereal grains in the lower income countries demand for cereal grains either increased or remained the same with urbanization among cereal grains urbanization has had negative effects on demand for rice and coarse grains but consistently positive effects on demand for wheat only japan and thailand among the countries studied have negative income elasticities of demand for total cereal grains and for rice in particular hence rice remains a necessity and a normal good in most asian countries previous estimates of income elasticities of rice based on time series aggregate data tend to be lower than those based on cross section household level data when urbanization is explicitly specified in the demand model the estimates of income elasticities from time series data turn out to be consistent with those from cross section data

on the presence of risk premiums in foreign exchange markets abstract this paper provides evidence that for most currencies the exchange risk premium as identified in grauer litzenberger and stehle 1976 is highly volatile random and on average equal to zero further investigation suggests that this volatility can be traced to the fact that our index of world market performance does not adequately represent the common element of variance among currencies in the light of this evidence we investigate the existence of an exchange risk premium in the framework of an alternative model the arbitrage pricing theory proposed by ross 1976 is a particularly appropriate alternative since it does not accord an essential role to the market portfolio the results of our tests suggest the presence of an exchange risk premium

a theory of the nominal term structure of interest rates a model of the nominal term structure of interest rates is developed that has a positive and stationary process for the interest rate and delivers closed form expressions for the prices of discount bonds and european options on bonds unlike the one state variable version of the cox ingersoll and ross 1985 model this model even in its one state variable version allows the term premium to change sign as a function of the state and the term to maturity and also allows for shapes of the yield curve that are observed in the u s data but that are disallowed in the cox ingersoll and ross model article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

real interest rate parity new measures and tests abstract international financial theory implies that for international comparisons the appropriate measure of the real interest rate is one defined in terms of traded goods prices alone new measures of the real interest rate are constructed using changes in price indexes for traded goods as deflators these new measures are tested for international real rate equality and the results are compared to those of similar tests using measures based on the change in the cpi and the wpi there are important differences between the traded goods real rate measures and those based on either the cpi or the wpi however in general the tests support the hypothesis that the real interest rate is approximately measured in terms of traded goods jel f30

a model of uk real effective exchange rate behaviour an integrated model of the uk real effective exchange rate is examined which links purchasing power parity with trade flow and asset market mechanisms furthermore time series and econometric analysis using quarterly data from 1972 to 1987 are applied the results obtained are broadly consistent with this model and imply that the uk real effective exchange rate index is constant in the long run

food demand in rural china evidence from rural household survey abstract the recent rural reforms in china have had great effects on agricultural production and productivity as well as rural household consumption while much has been written on production and productivity effects of these reforms very few chinese studies have attempted to analyze the changes in rural consumption patterns this paper uses a dynamic aids model to estimate various food demand parameters for chinese rural households using rural household survey data recently released by the china state statistical bureau the results show that all important food commodities including rice wheat coarse grains vegetables meat tobacco and alcohol have positive expenditure elasticities rice wheat and coarse grains are necessities while meat vegetables alcohol and tobacco are luxuries the expenditure elasticities for rice coarse grains and tobacco are declining but those for wheat meat vegetables and alcohol are increasing as per capita income rises and population increases the demand for these items will continue to increase therefore china must continue to increase its food production by a greater rate in the future in order to avoid food shortages

currency preferences purchasing power risks and the determination of exchange rates in an optimizing model most recent research on the theory of exchange rate determination treats the exchange rate as the relative price of two assets domestic money and foreign money the value of an asset depends on the distribution of its return however most of the research has dealt with models in which there is no uncertainty the present paper focuses on questions that cannot be addressed in a world of certainty because in such a world an asset is never risky it investigates how purchasing power risks affect the determination of exchange rates this investigation is pursued in a fairly general optimizing model the present research is related to some recent work in international economics and in financial economics it follows the approach of obstfeld 1981 and stockman 1980 in that it uses an optimizing model and takes into account the role of government transfers in the flow budget constraint of individuals as in calvo and rodriguez 1977 stockman 1980 and others the fact that holdings of foreign monies are useful to domestic individuals is taken into account finally the paper uses techniques developed in papers in the finance literature which build on merton s 1973 asset pricing model and use a concept of equilibrium developed in

stationary time varying risk premia in forward foreign exchange rates abstract there is mounting evidence that forward foreign exchange rates contain time varying risk premia however this evidence is from tests for which statistical inference is based on asymptotic distribution theory furthermore it is uncertain whether risk premia evolve as stationary or nonstationary processes this paper applies two exact small sample pointwise most powerful invariant statistical tests to determine 1 whether forward exchange rates contain time varying risk premia and 2 whether the time varying risk premia are stationary or nonstationary these tests finds strong evidence that forward exchange rates contain stationary time varying risk premia during the recent float evidence from the interwar float is mixed