The financial content of inflation risks in the euro area

Recent studies have emphasized that survey-based inflation risk measures are informative about future inflation, and thus are useful for monetary authorities. However, these data are typically only available at a quarterly frequency, whereas monetary policy decisions require a more frequent monitoring of such risks. Using the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters, we show that high-frequency financial market data have predictive power for the low-frequency survey-based inflation risk indicators observed at the end of a quarter. We rely on MIDAS regressions for handling the problem of mixing data with different frequencies that such an analysis implies. We also illustrate that upside and downside risks react differently to financial indicators.     

Decomposing the declining volatility of long-term inflation expectations

The level and volatility of survey-based measures of long-term inflation expectations have come down dramatically over the past several decades. To capture these changes in inflation dynamics, we embed both short- and long-term expectations into a medium-scale VAR model with stochastic volatility. The model estimates attribute most of the marked decline in the volatility of expectations to smaller shocks to long-run inflation expectations. According to our estimates, the volatility of shocks plummeted in the early to mid-1980s, moved to a somewhat higher level that prevailed for much of the 1990s, and then declined to and remained at very low levels.     

Shifts in volatility driven by large stock market shocks

This paper presents an extension of the stochastic volatility model which allows for level shifts in volatility of stock market returns, known as structural breaks. These shifts are endogenously driven by large return shocks (innovations), reflecting large pieces of market news. These shocks are identified from the data as being bigger in absolute terms than the values of two threshold parameters of the model: one for the negative shocks and one for the positive shocks. The model can be employed to investigate different sources of stock market volatility shifts driven by market news, without relying on exogenous information. In addition to this, it has a number of interesting features which enable us to study the effects of large return shocks on future levels of market volatility. The above properties of the model are shown based on a study for the US stock market volatility.     

Foreign exchange market volatility in EU accession countries in the run-up to Euro adoption: weathering uncharted waters

The paper analyzes foreign exchange market volatility in four Central European EU accession countries in 2001–2003. By using a Markov regime-switching model, it identifies two regimes representing high- and low-volatility periods. The estimation results show not only that volatilities are different between the two regimes, but also that some of the cross-correlations differ. Notably, cross-correlations increase substantially for two pairs of currencies (the Hungarian forint–Polish zloty and the Czech koruna–Slovak koruna) in the high-volatility period. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of these findings.     

P-star in times of crisis – Forecasting inflation for the euro area

In this paper we present three empirically testable versions of the common p-star model and evaluate their forecasting performance using conventional techniques. We try to answer the question if the p-star approach is preferable to achieve a reliable short-run inflation forecast and with regard to the latter we incur the need for a stable demand for money function. Our findings indicate the recurrence of the relevance of the monetary pillar of the ECB's two-pillar framework. In addition, we check for the effects of the current financial and economic crisis that started in 2007 on the forecasting performance, using two sub-sample periods, one excluding and one including the latter, and analyze the impact of the applied filter technique to compute the required equilibrium values.     

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve and staggered price and wage determination in a model with firm-specific labor

We develop a DSGE model with firm-specific labor where wage and price setting are subject to Calvo-type staggering. This is in general an intractable problem due to complicated intertemporal dependencies between price and wage decisions. However, the problem is significantly simplified if we, in line with empirical evidence, assume that prices can be changed whenever wages are. We show that the price- and wage-setting relationships are substantially altered by the introduction of firm-specific labor. Specifically, the inflation response is substantially dampened, whereas the wage inflation response is increased as compared to models with freely mobile labor. These distinctive features of the model with firm-specific labor are supported by empirical evidence from a structural VAR.     

Filtering and identification of Heston's stochastic volatility model and its market risk

We study the filtering problem for the stochastic volatility model of Heston by using the nonlinear estimation theory. To solve the estimation problem for the stochastic volatility process, we use the random time change method. The derived basic equation for the filtering is the so-called Zakai equation and its numerically realized algorithm is proposed with the aid of the splitting-up method. Regarding the European call option problem, the identification of the market price of the volatility risk is also studied. Some numerical simulation studies are demonstrated to show the advantage of the proposed method.     

Sharing risk within and across countries: the role of labor market institutions

This paper studies the effect of labor market institutions on within- and cross-country risk sharing, using a model of international trade in risky assets modified to include a subset of agents, labor-owners who do not access financial markets, and employment security provisions. Labor market, institutions, by promoting within-country risk-shifting arrangements between agents with or without, access to financial markets, reduce the fluctuations of non-tradable labor incomes and amplify the, fluctuations of capital incomes. Capital flows become more volatile across countries, and if the, configuration of labor markets differs across countries, capital-owners bear the burden of systematic, undiversifiable world aggregate uncertainty.     

Information systems for collaborating versus transacting: Impact on manufacturing plant performance in the presence of demand volatility

Research at the nexus of operations management and information systems suggests that manufacturing plants may benefit from the utilization of information systems for collaborating and transacting with suppliers and customers. The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which value generated by information systems for collaborating versus transacting is contingent upon demand volatility. We analyze a unique dataset assembled from non-public U.S. Census Bureau data of manufacturing plants. Our findings suggest that when faced with volatile demand, plants employing information systems for collaborating with suppliers and customers experience positive and significant benefits to performance, in terms of both labor productivity and inventory turnover. In contrast, results suggest that plants employing information systems for transacting in volatile environments do not experience such benefits. Further exploratory analysis suggests that in the context of demand volatility, these two distinct dimensions of IT-based integration have differing performance implications at different stages of the production process in terms of raw-materials inventory and finished-goods inventory, but not in terms of work-in-process inventory. Taken together, our study contributes to theoretical and managerial understanding of the contingent value of information systems in volatile demand conditions in the supply chain context.     

Dependencies between price duration,volatility, volume and return on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

The successive changes of asset prices are the most visible manifestation of financial markets dynamics. There exist different views about factors generating these changes, but many researchers and practitioners agree that the most important among them is the impact of information flow. According to the market microstructure theories, it depends mainly on the behavior of informed and uniformed traders. In the paper, we investigate dependencies between the possible proxies of information process： price duration and corresponding to it volume change and return. Our main objective is to answer the question about the most important factor in the process of discovering information by uniformed traders. We apply a set of models for volatility, volume and duration data. Our analysis is performed for selected equities listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and uses tick-by-tick data. The obtained results show that the stock liquidity on this leading stock market in Central and Eastern Europe is the most important factor influencing the process of discovering information by uninformed traders.     

House price convergence in euro zone and non-euro zone countries

This study investigates whether single currency use increased house price convergence among various countries. First, the panel unit root test results indicate that the house prices in euro zone countries were more correlated than the house prices in non-euro zone countries. Second, the house prices in various European countries converged towards the house prices in Germany, which uses the single currency, rather than towards those in the United Kingdom, indicating that single currency use increased the influence of the German housing market on other markets. Finally, the log t regression model, a new convergence test, was employed and determined that the house prices in various European countries were not converging before 1992 but began to do so after that year. After the euro was implemented as an official currency, the house prices in various countries converged towards a consistent level. On the basis of the relative transition paths, this study determines that the differences among housing markets in various countries have continuously decreased since 1992. The empirical results indicate that the law of one price is applicable to tradable goods and that single currency use can integrate housing markets, which include non-tradable goods.     

Bond risk, bond return volatility, and the term structure of interest rates

This paper explores the time variation in the bond risk, as measured by the covariation of bond returns with stock returns and consumption growth, and in the volatility of bond returns. A robust stylized fact in empirical finance is that the spread between the yields on long- and short-term bonds forecasts future excess returns on bonds at varying horizons positively; in addition, the short-term nominal interest rate forecasts both the stock return volatility and the exchange rate volatility positively. This paper presents evidence that movements in both the short-term nominal interest rate and the yield spread are positively related to changes in the subsequent realized bond risk and bond return volatility. The yield spread appears to proxy for business conditions, while the short rate appears to proxy for inflation and economic uncertainty. A decomposition of bond betas into a real cash flow risk component and a discount rate risk component shows that yield spreads have offsetting effects in each component. A widening yield spread is correlated with a reduced cash-flow (or inflationary) risk for bonds, but it is also correlated with a larger discount rate risk for bonds. The short rate only forecasts the discount rate component of the bond beta.     

New tips from TIPS: Identifying inflation expectations and the risk premia of break-even inflation

This paper decomposes the break-even inflation rates derived from inflation-indexed bonds into inflation risk premia, liquidity risk premia, and inflation expectations. I estimate a common factor model with autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic (ARCH) errors that extracts co-movements from twenty-two monthly and quarterly indicators to identify these three components. The results indicate that the sharp declines in the 10-year and 5-year break-even inflation rates in 2009 reflect a substantial increase in liquidity risk rather than a decrease in inflation expectations. Break-even inflation rates underestimate inflation expectations over nearly the entire sample due to the liquidity risk premia carried by the inflation indexed bond yields. Also, the model-implied inflation expectations show better forecast performance for the average annual inflation rates than raw break-even inflation rates, the Survey of Professional Forecasters, and the Surveys of Consumers inflation forecasts.     

浅析订立劳动合同的技巧

劳动合同关系到合同双方当事人的切身利益,它也是劳动争议处理的主要依据之一,因此,不管是用人单位还是劳动者都应当掌握一定的劳动合同知识。文章主要从实际操作的角度,介绍一些劳动合同签订的技巧。     

News shocks and asset price volatility in general equilibrium

We study equity price volatility in general equilibrium with news shocks about future productivity and monetary policy. As West (1988) shows, in a partial equilibrium present discounted value model, news about the future cash flow reduces asset price volatility. We show that introducing news shocks in a canonical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model may not reduce asset price volatility under plausible parameter assumptions. This is because, in general equilibrium, the asset cash flow itself may be affected by the introduction of news shocks. In addition, we show that neglecting to account for policy news shocks (e.g., policy announcements) can potentially bias empirical estimates of the impact of monetary policy shocks on asset prices.     

Trader matching and the selection of market institutions

We analyze a stochastic dynamic learning model with boundedly rational traders who can choose among trading institutions with different matching characteristics. The framework allows for institutions featuring multiple prices (per good), thus violating the “law of one price.” We find that centralized institutions are stochastically stable for a broad class of dynamics and behavioral rules, independently of which other institutions are available. However, some decentralized institutions featuring multiple prices can also survive in the long run, depending on specific characteristics of the underlying learning dynamics such as fast transitions or optimistic behavior.     

Modeling common volatility characteristics and dynamic risk premia in European equity markets

The paper applies a Factor-GARCH model to evaluate the impact of the market portfolio, as a single common dynamic risk factor, on conditional volatility and risk premia for the returns on size-based equity portfolios of three major European markets; France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The results show that for the size-based portfolios the factor loading for the dynamic market factor is significant and positive but the association between the risk premia and the conditional market volatility is weak. However, the dynamic market factor is shown to explain common characteristics in the conditional variance such as asymmetry and persistence. This finding is consistent across markets and portfolio sizes.     

The VIX,the variance premium and stock market volatility

We decompose the squared VIX index, derived from US S&P500 options prices, into the conditional variance of stock returns and the equity variance premium. We evaluate a plethora of state-of-the-art volatility forecasting models to produce an accurate measure of the conditional variance. We then examine the predictive power of the VIX and its two components for stock market returns, economic activity and financial instability. The variance premium predicts stock returns while the conditional stock market variance predicts economic activity and has a relatively higher predictive power for financial instability than does the variance premium.     

市场失效、市场界限与城市规划调控

以经济理论分析市场失效、市场界限,论证城市规划作为政府管理对城市建设、资源保护、土地利用安排等方面干预和管理必要性和主要内容.     

Evaluating predictive densities of US output growth and inflation in a large macroeconomic data set

We evaluate conditional predictive densities for US output growth and inflation using a number of commonly-used forecasting models that rely on large numbers of macroeconomic predictors. More specifically, we evaluate how well conditional predictive densities based on the commonly-used normality assumption fit actual realizations out-of-sample. Our focus on predictive densities acknowledges the possibility that, although some predictors can cause point forecasts to either improve or deteriorate, they might have the opposite effect on higher moments. We find that normality is rejected for most models in some dimension according to at least one of the tests we use. Interestingly, however, combinations of predictive densities appear to be approximated correctly by a normal density: the simple, equal average when predicting output growth, and the Bayesian model average when predicting inflation.