Dynamic price discovery in Chinese agricultural futures markets

Research has not fully explored how Chinese agricultural futures markets perform their price discovery function over time. Our paper examines the role of Chinese agricultural futures markets in the price discovery process based on three well-established measurements of average price discovery contribution, and more importantly, the dynamic price discovery measurement. Using daily futures and spot prices from fourteen agricultural commodities, we find eleven contracts are efficient in price discovery. Besides, market-oriented changes in policies strengthen the price discovery performance of most futures markets, except for commodities that rely heavily on imports from other countries. Our results also suggest that trading activity is particularly important in determining whether thinly traded contracts are efficient in price discovery. Our paper provides a comprehensive judgment involving both average and dynamic price discovery contribution measurements on assessing the efficiency of Chinese agricultural futures markets. Our results might also serve as a reminder that market-oriented reforms in the spot markets of commodities might be useful to intensify the pricing power of the futures markets.     

基于协整理论的美国电力期货市场实证研究

本文基于VAR的协整理论,对美国PJM电力期货市场作了模型实证研究。因果关系检验显示下月合约价格是现货价格单向的Granger原因。协整检验结果显示电力期货价格和现货价格存在长期稳定均衡的关系,期货市场具有价格发现的功能,与现货市场相比价格发现功能较弱。方差分解结果显示,期货价格受自身的影响很大,受现货价格的影响很小;而现货价格受自身影响很大,随着滞后期的增加,受自身的影响逐渐减弱,受期货市场的影响逐步增大,期货市场在价格决定中起主导作用;脉冲响应函数同样显示现货对期货的影响较小,期货对现货的影响相对较大。     

我国黄金市场期货价格与现货价格的实证研究

选取近10年的黄金期货价格数据和现货价格数据进行分析。对两组时间序列数据进行单位根检验、协整性检验以此分析期货和现货之间的关系,并建立误差修正模型分析期货价格对现货价格的影响程度,通过格兰杰因果检验分析两者之间的效应。结果表明,近十年黄金的期货和现货价格之间确实存在协整关系,两者之间相互影响,影响效果显著性不强。期货价格对现货价格的指导作用效果不强,表明我国期货市场的价格发现作用没有完全发挥。     

The Efficiency of the Chinese Commodity Futures Markets： Development and Empirical Evidence

I. Introduction In the early 1980s China set about transforming its moribund economy by adopting, in stages, various elements of the market-based systems. Among the reforms were thederegulation of prices and the introduction of financial markets for assets. The first stock market was set up in Shanghai in 1991 and in the same year the first commodities market opened in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Since then, both the stock market and the commodities futures markets have expanded substantiall…     

基于EMD分解的螺纹钢期货价格发现的实证研究

运用经验模态分解方法(EMD),分别将螺纹钢期货价格和现货价格时间序列分解成若干IMF分量和趋势项。通过对分解后的不同分量进行统计和计量分析发现:①与期货价格与现货价格的相关性相比,相应的趋势项之间具有更高的相关关系;②期货价格的主IMF分量在形态上对现货价格主IMF分量具有引导作用;③IMF中期波动分量和长期波动能够很好的表现出期货价格和现货价格的因果关系。这些结果表明,螺纹钢期货市场已经基本具备了价格发现的功能。     

Impact of Monetary Supply on Chinese Nonferrous Metal Price Movement*

Employing both classical vector autoregressive methodology and regression models utilizing shock factors constructed with the Hodrick–Prescott filtering method, this paper empirically studies the influence of monetary factors on the price of nonferrous metals and their expectation formation in the Chinese market. Monetary factors are found to significantly positively influence Chinese nonferrous metal prices, and further empirical research reveals that a structural change occurred near August 2006. There is an expectation formation mechanism of lagged futures prices on spot metal prices, and the risk originating primarily from international market is transmitted to Chinese markets.     

“Exports‐at‐Risk”: The Effect of Multimarket Contact in International Trade

Despite a well‐established literature examining possible impacts on competition in oligopolistic markets from multimarket contact (MMC) among diversified firms, only recently have trade theorists considered the possible effects of MMC among exporters in limiting the anticipated procompetitive role of imports. This article presents a first effort to test the empirical importance of a measure of this MMC, called “exports‐at‐risk,” on import prices (unit‐values). Suggestive evidence of anticompetitive impacts of MMC among exporters is obtained for highly traded four‐digit harmonized system (HS) products within the broad category of “fats and oils.” Exporters in fats and oils seem to price higher in markets where they meet rivals with the ability to retaliate against their “exports at risk.”     

Asymmetric Mispricing and Regime‐dependent Dynamics in Futures and Options Markets

We examine regime‐dependent price dynamics and mispricing adjustments within the KOSPI200 spot, futures and options markets through an analysis of data from January 2000 to December 2014. Investors exploit mispricing between derivatives and spot markets only if mispricing is sufficiently large. The futures traders take long, rather than short, positions to adjust for mispricing. Mispricing between spot and options markets is adjusted by trading options and not by trading spots. We find the bidirectional information flows between spot and futures markets when the futures‐implied index is sufficiently larger than the spot index. In contrast, no significant lead–lag relationship between spot and options markets exists. Significant asymmetric transaction costs exist in the spot market and this asymmetry has decreased over time.     

Rise and Fall of the First Financial Futures Market in China： The Case of Chinese Government Bond Futures

This paper studies the rise and fall of the first financial futures market in China. We compare the characteristics in the Chinese Government bond futures market with those in the US T-bond futures market. They differ in market design and structure, market governance, margin requirements, position limits, delivery process, and the way in which the settlement price is calculated. Furthermore, with a unique dataset, we show that prior to maturities of government bond futures, traders began to accumulate significant amounts of long positions for several selected contracts without the intention to offset, forcing short position holders to either purchase deliverable bonds or offset futures at highly inflated prices, causing higher market volatility and price disequilibrium in both spot and futures markets. Arbitrage opportunity arises and the market eventually collapses. The lessons learned from the suspension of the Chinese Government bond futures market offer an invaluable learning experience.     

我国黄金期货市场价格发现与套期保值功能——基于ARDL-ECM模型

文章收集了2011-2013年的黄金期货和现货价格数据,采用ARDL-ECM模型分析我国黄金期货价格和现货价格之间的长期均衡和短期动态关系。研究表明:我国黄金期货市场具有完美且有效的套期保值功能,但尚不具有价格发现功能,其运行效率有待提高。     

The futures premium and rice market efficiency in prewar Japan

This article studies the interrelation between spot and futures prices in the two major rice markets in prewar Japan from the perspective of market efficiency. Applying a non‐Bayesian time‐varying model approach to the fundamental equation for spot returns and the futures premium, we detect when efficiency reductions in the two major rice markets occurred. We also examine how government interventions affected the rice markets in Japan, which colonized Taiwan and Korea before the Second World War, and argue that the function of rice futures markets crucially depended on the differences in the structure of rice spot markets. Initially the increased volume of imported rice of a different variety from domestic rice disrupted the rice futures markets. Then, government intervention in the rice futures markets failed to improve the disruption. Changes in colonial rice cropping successfully mitigated the disruption, and colonial rice was promoted in order to unify the different varieties of inland and colonial rice.     

我国股指期货市场价格发现功能研究——基于上升、下跌和震荡状态下的分析

为了研究我国股指期货市场的价格发现功能,文章按照时变的思路,根据股指期货在不同市场环境下的作用和表现,将市场区别为上升、下跌和震荡三种情况来检验价格发现功能的差异。通过采用VEC模型、PT模型和IS模型进行对比分析,发现在大牛市和熊市时期,股指期货的所起到的作用会很明显,在价格发现中所占比例较大,为50-70%;而在股市平盘震荡时期,股指期货的价格发现能力要弱一些,只占20-30%比例。文中建议要加快发展我国股指期货市场,改善和优化目前的产品结构体系,减少对市场的不必要限制措施,使之成为更加规范和成熟的股指期货市场。     

Libéralisation du commerce et intégration spatiale des marchés: Le cas du maïs au Togo

Abstract: The cereal market of Togo was liberalized in 1987. This policy aims to improve markets' spatial integration through the development of arbitrage. The paper assesses the extent of maize market spatial integration in order to understand how it has been affected by price liberalization. The monthly retail maize prices collected on 13 markets for the period from 1980 to 2001 are considered. The results show that the impact of price liberalization on markets integration is moderate. The liberalization has not significantly improved the extent of long‐run and short‐run integration of maize markets. The speed of price adjustment is relatively weak for most of the markets. In order to improve market efficiency, it is suggested that the government should create a market information service (SIM) which will be entrusted in collecting and disseminating weekly cereal prices all over the country.     

Interaction between Foreign and Domestic Investors in the Korean Stock and Futures Markets*

The present paper analyzes the behavioral relations of major investor groups in the stabilized Korean stock and futures markets after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Investor groups cannot be classified as positive or negative feedback traders on market returns when both stock and futures markets are considered, which is inconsistent with the results in Ghysels and Seon (2005). Foreign investors and domestic institutions tend to take opposite positions in both markets. The impact of foreign investors on the basis change is significantly negative in the futures market, whereas domestic institutions have a negative relation in the stock market. This supports the view that selling activity of foreign investors in the futures market pulls the futures price down compared with the index value and, consequently, induces the reverse cash‐and‐carry trade of domestic institutions. This relationship, which negatively influenced the Korean economy during the crisis, as shown in Ghysels and Seon (2005), still exists in the Korean financial markets.     

Accounting Quality,Stock Price Delay,and Future Stock Returns*

In frictionless capital markets with complete information and rational investors, stock prices adjust to new information instantaneously and completely. However, a substantial body of research studies information imperfections such as asymmetric information and incomplete information. Information imperfections potentially hinder timely price discovery and are likely associated with delayed stock price adjustment to information. Our first research question therefore is whether the quality of accounting information (or “accounting quality”) is one such information imperfection that is associated with cross‐sectional variation in stock price delay. We define accounting quality as the precision with which financial reports convey information to equity investors about the firm’s expected cash flows. Poor accounting quality is likely associated with higher expected returns through uncertainty about stock valuation parameters and incomplete information. Our second research question therefore is whether the accounting quality component of price delay is associated with higher future stock returns. Consistent with our hypotheses, the results show that poor accounting quality is associated with delayed price adjustment and higher future stock returns. Thus, accounting quality plays a role in timely stock price discovery.     

What Determines China's Grain Imports and Self‐sufficiency? The Role of Rising Domestic Costs and Varying World Market Prices

China's grain sectors have faced unprecedented challenges in recent years as the ever‐increasing and historically high level of grain output has failed to reduce grain imports. On the contrary, high grain imports and high domestic stock have accompanied historically high domestic output, a situation dubbed the “triple high” phenomenon in current policy discussion. This paper explores the role of widening domestic–world market price gaps in determining the triple high phenomenon. Unlike earlier studies that relied on production capacities, this paper argues that domestic production and demand (hence imports) are functions of domestic and world market prices and proposes an analytical framework to explicitly capture such price gaps under restricted trade linkages in general equilibrium. Following this approach, a set of price scenarios for the 2011–2020 period are constructed and simulated in a computable general equilibrium model. Results from the core scenarios, in which recent domestic and world market price trends are assumed to continue, suggest that further widening price gaps would substantially increase grain imports and reduce domestic output (by 60 million tons) and self‐sufficiency ratios from base levels. In the alternative scenarios with larger (smaller) price gaps, we find higher (lower) imports and larger (smaller) decreases in domestic output and self‐sufficiency ratios. Such results provide important policy implications as China's agricultural policy undergoes significant adjustment.     

Assessing the price dynamics of onshore and offshore RMB markets: An ITS model approach

This paper investigates how the price dynamics of both onshore and offshore RMB markets are affected by fundamental determinants, market liquidity, global risk aversion and policies by using daily data from August 2010 to February 2016. The interval time series (ITS) modelling is applied to study the RMB price mechanism by capturing prices of the two markets as one self-formed interval data. An interval-based Wald test is constructed to examine the differences between the coefficients and an interval-based Mallows criterion is proposed for choosing appropriate explanatory variables. We find that both the price level and the price differences of onshore and offshore RMB markets are greatly affected by economic fundamentals indicated by different returns on stock indexes and market liquidity indicated by bid-ask prices of offshore market price. In addition, it is suggested that the interest rate spread between China and the US and the global risk appetite do not significantly affect the RMB price for both onshore and offshore markets. Finally, the results imply that “811 reform” of the RMB exchange rate regime does not change the fundamental price dynamics of RMB markets, but significantly changes how economic fundamentals affect the price mechanism of RMB exchange rate.     

上海原油期货与国际原油期货:联动机制和溢出效应

建立VECM—GARCH—BEKK—T模型,分析了上海原油期货价格与WTI、布伦特两大国际基准油价格之间的传导效应、均值溢出效应、波动溢出效应、BEKK交叉效应以及杠杆效应。研究发现,上海、WTI和布伦特原油期货三个市场存在显著的均值溢出和波动溢出效应。其中,上海原油期货上市重构了WTI和布伦特原油期货两个市场的均衡关系、主导影响因素、影响期限以及波动溢出效应;上海原油期货与国际油价有机联动,对WTI的正向影响要大于对布伦特的影响,但WTI、布伦特对上海的影响依然占主导地位。此外,短期内,当期上海原油期货价格与历史WTI和上海原油期货价格波动联系显著为正,而与历史布伦特原油期货价格则显著为负。因此,需要在持续提高上海原油期货参与者数量、提高国际参与度和认可度、完善原油期货区间波段管理机制、提升原油期货交易量、加快人民币国际化进程等方面努力。     

国际商品市场中"一价定律"的验证:共同概率模型和动态贸易变量

本文讨论并引伸了Barrett和Li(2002)提出的共同概率模型,在原有基础上将贸易变量动态化,以增加在经验分析中所包含的信息量和解释能力。考虑到国际商品贸易的跨期性,我们的预期价格采用了商品期货价。我们用改进后的方法对中美大豆贸易做了实证分析,发现两国大豆市场自1995年以来基本上是整合的,并发现对竞争性均衡关系的偏离主要发生在早期,即在中国商品期货市场完善和农产品市场体制改革之前。研究还发现两国大豆价差在南美豆收获期后明显缩小。收益不确定性参数的t检验不显著在一定程度上表明了进口商对价格风险的规避行为。