pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
Egalitarian and Just Digital Currency Networks
Authors: Gal Shahaf, Ehud Shapiro, Nimrod Talmon
Date: 2020-05-29 00:00:00

Cryptocurrencies are a digital medium of exchange with decentralized control that renders the community operating the cryptocurrency its sovereign. Leading cryptocurrencies use proof-of-work or proof-of-stake to reach consensus, thus are inherently plutocratic. This plutocracy is reflected not only in control over execution, but also in the distribution of new wealth, giving rise to ``rich get richer'' phenomena. Here, we explore the possibility of an alternative digital currency that is egalitarian in control and just in the distribution of created wealth. Such currencies can form and grow in grassroots and sybil-resilient way. A single currency community can achieve distributive justice by egalitarian coin minting, whereby each member mints one coin at every time step. Egalitarian minting results, in the limit, in the dilution of any inherited assets and in each member having an equal share of the minted currency, adjusted by the relative productivity of the members. Our main theorem shows that a currency network, where agents can be members of more than one currency community, can achieve distributive justice globally across the network by joint egalitarian minting, whereby each agent mints one coin in only one community at each timestep. Specifically, we show that a sufficiently large intersection between two communities -- relative to the gap in their productivity -- will cause the exchange rates between their currencies to converge to 1:1, resulting in global distributive justice.
The Effects of Taxes on Wealth Inequality in Artificial Chemistry Models of Economic Activity
Authors: Wolfgang Banzhaf
Date: 2020-07-03 00:00:00

We consider a number of Artificial Chemistry models for economic activity and what consequences they have for the formation of economic inequality. We are particularly interested in what tax measures are effective in dampening economic inequality. By starting from well-known kinetic exchange models, we examine different scenarios for reducing the tendency of economic activity models to form unequal wealth distribution in equilibrium.
Portfolio Optimization of 40 Stocks Using the DWave Quantum Annealer
Authors: Jeffrey Cohen, Alex Khan, Clark Alexander
Date: 2020-07-02 00:00:00
Tasks: Portfolio Optimization

We investigate the use of quantum computers for building a portfolio out of a universe of U.S. listed, liquid equities that contains an optimal set of stocks. Starting from historical market data, we look at various problem formulations on the D-Wave Systems Inc. D-Wave 2000Q(TM) System (hereafter called DWave) to find the optimal risk vs return portfolio; an optimized portfolio based on the Markowitz formulation and the Sharpe ratio, a simplified Chicago Quantum Ratio (CQR), then a new Chicago Quantum Net Score (CQNS). We approach this first classically, then by our new method on DWave. Our results show that practitioners can use a DWave to select attractive portfolios out of 40 U.S. liquid equities.
One trade at a time -- unraveling the Equity Premium Puzzle
Authors: Andrei N. Soklakov
Date: 2015-07-26 00:00:00

Financial markets provide a natural quantitative lab for understanding some of the most advanced human behaviours. Among them is the use of mathematical tools known as financial instruments. Besides money, the two most fundamental financial instruments are bonds and equities. More than 30 years ago Mehra and Prescott found the numerical performance of equities relative to government bonds could not be explained by consumption-based (mainstream) economic theories. This empirical observation, known as the Equity Premium Puzzle, has been defying mainstream economics ever since. The recent financial crisis revealed an even deeper need for understanding financial products. We show how understanding the rational nature of product design resolves the Equity Premium Puzzle. In doing so we obtain an experimentally tested theory of product design.
Financial replicator dynamics: emergence of systemic-risk-averting strategies
Authors: Indrajit Saha, Veeraruna Kavitha
Date: 2020-02-20 00:00:00

We consider a random financial network with a large number of agents. The agents connect through credit instruments borrowed from each other or through direct lending, and these create the liabilities. The settlement of the debts of various agents at the end of the contract period can be expressed as solutions of random fixed point equations. Our first step is to derive these solutions (asymptotically), using a recent result on random fixed point equations. We consider a large population in which agents adapt one of the two available strategies, risky or risk-free investments, with an aim to maximize their expected returns (or surplus). We aim to study the emerging strategies when different types of replicator dynamics capture inter-agent interactions. We theoretically reduced the analysis of the complex system to that of an appropriate ordinary differential equation (ODE). We proved that the equilibrium strategies converge almost surely to that of an attractor of the ODE. We also derived the conditions under which a mixed evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) emerges; in these scenarios the replicator dynamics converges to an equilibrium at which the expected returns of both the populations are equal. Further the average dynamics (choices based on large observation sample) always averts systemic risk events (events with large fraction of defaults). We verified through Monte Carlo simulations that the equilibrium suggested by the ODE method indeed represents the limit of the dynamics.
Interconnectedness in the Global Financial Market
Authors: Matthias Raddant, Dror Y. Kenett
Date: 2017-04-04 00:00:00

The global financial system is highly complex, with cross-border interconnections and interdependencies. In this highly interconnected environment, local financial shocks and events can be easily amplified and turned into global events. This paper analyzes the dependencies among nearly 4,000 stocks from 15 countries. The returns are normalized by the estimated volatility using a GARCH model and a robust regression process estimates pairwise statistical relationships between stocks from different markets. The estimation results are used as a measure of statistical interconnectedness, and to derive network representations, both by country and by sector. The results show that countries like the United States and Germany are in the core of the global stock market. The energy, materials, and financial sectors play an important role in connecting markets, and this role has increased over time for the energy and materials sectors. Our results confirm the role of global sectoral factors in stock market dependence. Moreover, our results show that the dependencies are rather volatile and that heterogeneity among stocks is a non-negligible aspect of this volatility.
Changes in Household Net Financial Assets After the Great Recession: Did Financial Planners Make a Difference?
Authors: Joseph W. Goetz, Lance Palmer, Lini Zhang, Swarn Chatterjee
Date: 2020-06-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Survey

This study utilized the 2007-2009 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) panel dataset to examine the impact of financial planner use on household net financial asset level during the Great recession. Data included 3,862 respondents who completed the SCF survey and a follow up interview. The results indicated that starting to use a financial planner during the Great Recession had a positive impact on preserving and increasing the value of households' net financial assets, while curtailing the use of a financial planner during this time had a negative impact on preserving the value of households' financial assets. Thus, study findings indicated that the benefit of using a financial planner maybe particularly high during a major financial downturn.
Application of Facebook's Prophet Algorithm for Successful Sales Forecasting Based on Real-world Data
Authors: Emir Zunic, Kemal Korjenic, Kerim Hodzic, Dzenana Donko
Date: 2020-05-07 00:00:00

This paper presents a framework capable of accurately forecasting future sales in the retail industry and classifying the product portfolio according to the expected level of forecasting reliability. The proposed framework, that would be of great use for any company operating in the retail industry, is based on Facebook's Prophet algorithm and backtesting strategy. Real-world sales forecasting benchmark data obtained experimentally in a production environment in one of the biggest retail companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina is used to evaluate the framework and demonstrate its capabilities in a real-world use case scenario.
Value relevance of the components of oil and gas reserve quantity change disclosures of upstream oil and gas companies in the london stock exchange
Authors: Tega Anighoro
Date: 2020-05-06 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

The high level of risk and uncertainty in harnessing oil and gas reserves poses an accounting dilemma in the reporting of reserves quantity information; information which is critical and relied on by investors for decision making. Different studies have indicated that reserves disclosure information is fundamental to understanding the value of the firm. This study attempts to contribute to the growing value relevance literature on reserves disclosures by examining the value relevance of the components of oil and gas reserve quantity change disclosures of upstream oil and gas companies in the London Stock Exchange. Particularly, it investigates the relationship between average historical share returns and changes in reserves from explorations, acquisitions, production, revisions and sale. It also examines the value relevance of the quality of these disclosures. Using archival data from LSE, databases and annual reports, and applying a multifactor framework, the empirical results suggested that changes in reserves as well as the components of these changes where associated with share returns though insignificantly due to the significant impact of oil price and longitudinal effect posed by applying the measurement approach with utilizes historical returns. However, the quality of reserves disclosures has a positively significant relationship with share returns. The volatility and decline in oil price is also reflected in both low average share returns at -0.4% and low average growth in reserves at 8.94% for the last 8 years in the sector.
Defining an intrinsic stickiness parameter of stock price returns
Authors: Naji Massad, Jørgen Vitting Andersen
Date: 2020-05-05 00:00:00

We introduce a non linear pricing model of individual stock returns that defines a stickiness parameter of the returns. The pricing model resembles the capital asset pricing model used in finance but has a non linear component inspired from models of earth quake tectonic plate movements. The link to tectonic plate movements happens, since price movements of a given stock index is seen adding stress to its components of individual stock returns, in order to follow the index. How closely individual stocks follow the indexs price movements, can then be used to define their stickiness
Heuristics in experiments with infinitely large strategy spaces
Authors: Jørgen Vitting Andersen, Philippe de Peretti
Date: 2020-05-05 00:00:00
Tasks: Decision Making

We introduce a new methodology that enables detection of the onset of convergence towards Nash equilibria in simple repeated games with infinitely large strategy spaces, thereby revealing the heuristics used in decision-making. The method works by constraining on a special finite subset of strategies, called decoupled strategies. We show how the technique can be applied to understand price formation in financial market experiments by introducing a predictive measure {\Delta}D: the different between positive decoupled strategies (recommending to buy) and negative decoupled strategies (recommending to sell). Using {\Delta}D we illustrate how the method can predict (at certain special times) participants' actions with a high success rate in a series of experiments
The hyperbolic geometry of financial networks
Authors: Martin Keller-Ressel, Stephanie Nargang
Date: 2020-05-01 00:00:00

Based on data from the European banking stress tests of 2014, 2016 and the transparency exercise of 2018 we demonstrate for the first time that the latent geometry of financial networks can be well-represented by geometry of negative curvature, i.e., by hyperbolic geometry. This allows us to connect the network structure to the popularity-vs-similarity model of Papdopoulos et al., which is based on the Poincar\'e disc model of hyperbolic geometry. We show that the latent dimensions of `popularity' and `similarity' in this model are strongly associated to systemic importance and to geographic subdivisions of the banking system. In a longitudinal analysis over the time span from 2014 to 2018 we find that the systemic importance of individual banks has remained rather stable, while the peripheral community structure exhibits more (but still moderate) variability.
A New Pricing Theory That Solves the St. Petersburg Paradox
Authors: Dahang Li
Date: 2020-02-11 00:00:00

The St. Petersburg Paradox, an important topic in probability theory, has not been solved in the last 280 years. Since Nicolaus Bernoulli proposed the St. Petersburg Paradox in 1738, many people had tried to solve it and had proposed various explanations, but all were not satisfactory. In this paper we propose a new pricing theory with several rules, which incidentally resolves this paradox. The new pricing theory states that so-called fair (reasonable) pricing should be judged by the seller and the buyer independently. Reasonable pricing for the seller may not be appropriate for the buyer. The seller cares about costs, while the buyer is concerned about the realistic prospect of returns.The pricing theory we proposed can be applied to financial markets to solve the confusion that financial asset return with fat tails distribution will cause the option pricing formula to fail, thus making up the theoretical defects of quantitative financial pricing theory.
Oil economy phase plot: a physical analogy
Authors: Luciano Celi, Claudio Della Volpe, Luca Pardi, Stefano Siboni
Date: 2017-08-11 00:00:00

A phase plot of the oil economy is built using the literature data of world oil production, price, and EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested). An analogy between the oil economy and the Benard convection is proposed; some methods of interpretation and forecast of the system behavior are also shown based on "phase portrait" using as main variables the price, production and EROEI values. A scenery is proposed on this basis.
Issues In Disintermediation In The Real Estate Brokerage Sector
Authors: Michael C. Nwogugu
Date: 2020-05-01 00:00:00

This article introduces new models of disintermediation of the real estate broker by the buyer or the seller. The decision to retain a real estate broker is critical in the property purchase/sale process. The existing literature does not contain analysis of: 1) information asymmetry, 2) the conditions under which it will be optimal to disintermediate the broker, 3) social capital and reputation, 4) the impact of different types of real estate brokerage contracts. The article shows that dis-intermediation of the real estate broker by the seller or buyer may be optimal in certain conditions.
Regret Theory And Asset Pricing Anomalies In Incomplete Markets With Dynamic Un-Aggregated Preferences
Authors: Michael Nwogugu
Date: 2020-05-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Management

Although the CML (Capital Market Line), the Intertemporal-CAPM, the CAPM/SML (Security Market Line) and the Intertemporal Arbitrage Pricing Theory (IAPT) are widely used in portfolio management, valuation and capital markets financing; these theories are inaccurate and can adversely affect risk management and portfolio management processes. This article introduces several empirically testable financial theories that provide insights, and can be calibrated to real data and used to solve problems, and contributes to the literature by: i) explaining the conditions under which ICAPM/CAPM, IAPT and CML may be accurate, and why such conditions are not feasible; and explaining why the existence of incomplete markets and dynamic un-aggregated markets render CML, IAPT and ICAPM inaccurate; ii) explaining why the Consumption-Savings-InvestmentProduction framework is insufficient for asset pricing and analysis of changes in risk and asset values; and introducing a unified approach to asset pricing that simultaneously considers six factors, and the conditions under which this approach will work; iii) explaining why leisure, taxes and housing are equally as important as consumption and investment in asset pricing; iv) introducing the Marginal Rate of Intertemporal Joint Substitution (MRIJS) among Consumption, Taxes, Investment, Leisure, Intangibles and Housing - this model incorporates Regret Theory and captures features of reality that dont fit well into standard asset pricing models, and this framework can support specific or very general finance theories and or very complicated models; v) showing why the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution (EIS) is inaccurate and is insufficient for asset pricing and analysis of investor preferences.
Decision-Making, Sub-Additive Recursive "Matching" Noise And Biases In Risk-Weighted Stock/Bond Index Calculation Methods In Incomplete Markets With Partially Observable Multi-Attribute Preferences
Authors: Michael C. Nwogugu
Date: 2020-05-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Attribute, Decision Making

While Indices, Index tracking funds and ETFs have grown in popularity during then last ten years, there are many structural problems inherent in Index calculation methodologies and the legal/economic structure of ETFs. These problems raise actionable issues of Suitability and fraud under US securities laws, because most Indices and ETFs are misleading, have substantial tracking errors and dont reflect what they are supposed to track. This article contributes to the existing literature by: a) introducing and characterizing the errors and Biases inherent in risk-adjusted index weighting methods and the associated adverse effects; b) showing how these biases/effects inherent in Index calculation methods reduce social welfare, and can form the basis for harmful arbitrage activities.
On The Choice Between A Sale-Leaseback And Debt
Authors: Michael C. Nwogugu
Date: 2020-05-01 00:00:00

This article introduces decision models for commercial real estate leasing. The concepts and models developed in the article can also be applied to equipment leasing and other types of leasing.
Some Issues In Securitization And Disintermediation
Authors: Michael C. Nwogugu
Date: 2020-05-01 00:00:00

Securitization has become prevalent in many countries, and has substantial impact on government monetary policy and fiscal policy which have not yet been adequately analyzed in the existing literature. This article develops optimal conditions for efficient securitization, identifies constraints on securitization, and analyzes the interactions of capital-reserve requirements and securitization. This article introduces new decision models and theories of asset-securitization.
Quantifying the Economic Impact of Extreme Shocks on Businesses using Human Mobility Data: a Bayesian Causal Inference Approach
Authors: Takahiro Yabe, Yunchang Zhang, Satish Ukkusuri
Date: 2020-04-01 00:00:00
Tasks: Causal Inference, counterfactual, Time Series Analysis

In recent years, extreme shocks, such as natural disasters, are increasing in both frequency and intensity, causing significant economic loss to many cities around the world. Quantifying the economic cost of local businesses after extreme shocks is important for post-disaster assessment and pre-disaster planning. Conventionally, surveys have been the primary source of data used to quantify damages inflicted on businesses by disasters. However, surveys often suffer from high cost and long time for implementation, spatio-temporal sparsity in observations, and limitations in scalability. Recently, large scale human mobility data (e.g. mobile phone GPS) have been used to observe and analyze human mobility patterns in an unprecedented spatio-temporal granularity and scale. In this work, we use location data collected from mobile phones to estimate and analyze the causal impact of hurricanes on business performance. To quantify the causal impact of the disaster, we use a Bayesian structural time series model to predict the counterfactual performances of affected businesses (what if the disaster did not occur?), which may use performances of other businesses outside the disaster areas as covariates. The method is tested to quantify the resilience of 635 businesses across 9 categories in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Furthermore, hierarchical Bayesian models are used to reveal the effect of business characteristics such as location and category on the long-term resilience of businesses. The study presents a novel and more efficient method to quantify business resilience, which could assist policy makers in disaster preparation and relief processes.
Option Pricing with Greed and Fear Factor: The Rational Finance Approach
Authors: Svetlozar Rachev, Frank J. Fabozzi, Boryana Racheva-Iotova, Abootaleb Shirvani
Date: 2017-09-24 00:00:00

We explain the main concepts of Prospect Theory and Cumulative Prospect Theory within the framework of rational dynamic asset pricing theory. We derive option pricing formulas when asset returns are altered with a generalized Prospect Theory value function or a modified Prelec weighting probability function and introduce new parametric classes for Prospect Theory value functions and weighting probability functions consistent with rational dynamic pricing Theory. We study the behavioral finance notion of greed and fear from the point of view of rational dynamic asset pricing theory and derive the corresponding option pricing formulas in the case of asset returns that follow continuous diffusion or discrete binomial trees.
Competitive equilibria between staking and on-chain lending
Authors: Tarun Chitra
Date: 2019-11-28 00:00:00
Tasks: POS

Proof of Stake (PoS) is a burgeoning Sybil resistance mechanism that aims to have a digital asset ("token") serve as security collateral in crypto networks. However, PoS has so far eluded a comprehensive threat model that encompasses both Byzantine attacks from distributed systems and financial attacks that arise from the dual usage of the token as a means of payment and a Sybil resistance mechanism. In particular, the existence of derivatives markets makes malicious coordination among validators easier to execute than in Proof of Work systems. We demonstrate that it is also possible for on-chain lending smart contracts to cannibalize network security in PoS systems. When the yield provided by these contracts is more attractive than the inflation rate provided from staking, stakers will tend to remove their staked tokens and lend them out, thus reducing network security. In this paper, we provide a simple stochastic model that describes how rational validators with varying risk preferences react to changes in staking and lending returns. For a particular configuration of this model, we provide a formal proof of a phase transition between equilibria in which tokens are predominantly staked and those in which they are predominantly lent. We further validate this emergent adversarial behavior (e.g. reduced staked token supply) with agent-based simulations that sample transitions under more realistic conditions. Our results illustrate that rational, non-adversarial actors can dramatically reduce PoS network security if block rewards are not calibrated appropriately above the expected yields of on-chain lending.