Noise Trading and the Management of Operational Risk; Firms,Traders and Irrationality in Financial Markets*

abstract Efficient market models cannot explain the high level of trading in financial markets in terms of asset portfolio adjustment. It is presumed that much of this excessive trading is irrational ‘noise’ trading. A corollary is that there must either be irrational traders in the market or rational traders with irrational aberrations. The paper reviews the various attempts to explain noise trading in the finance literature, concluding that the persistence of irrationality is not well explained. Data from a study of 118 traders in four large investment banks are presented to advance reasons why traders might seek to trade more frequently than financial models predict. The argument is advanced that trades do not simply occur in order to generate profit, but it does not follow that such trading is irrational. Trading may generate information, accelerate learning, create commitments and enhance social capital, all of which sustain traders' long term survival in the market. The paper treats noise trading as a form of operational risk facing firms operating in financial markets and discusses approaches to the management of such risk.     

The dynamics of moonlighting in Russia1

This paper uses the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to analyse the dynamics of moonlighting by the working‐age population. We find that moonlighting is transitory and that a desire to switch jobs expressed in the past is positively related to moonlighting in the present and to actual job changes in the future. We also find that workers who moonlighted as self‐employed in the past represent 26.5 percent of the new self‐employed. These results suggest that moonlighting in Russia can be seen as an effective incubator for setting up new self‐employed businesses, thereby providing long‐term benefits for the economy.     

Improved estimation of portfolio value‐at‐risk under copula models with mixed marginals

Portfolio value‐at‐risk (PVAR) is widely used in practice, but recent criticisms have focused on risks arising from biased PVAR estimates due to model specification errors and other problems. The PVAR estimation method proposed in this article combines generalized Pareto distribution tails with the empirical density function to model the marginal distributions for each asset in the portfolio, and a copula model is used to form a joint distribution from the fitted marginals. The copula–mixed distribution (CMX) approach converges in probability to the true marginal return distribution but is based on weaker assumptions that may be appropriate for the returns data found in practice. CMX is used to estimate the joint distribution of log returns for the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) index and the associated futures contracts on SGX and TAIFEX. The PVAR estimates for various hedge portfolios are computed from the fitted CMX model, and backtesting diagnostics indicate that CMX outperforms the alternative PVAR estimators. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:997–1018, 2006     

中国负债知多少？

【美国《华尔街日报》7月23日】中国的隐性债务可能成为一大麻烦。     

基于城乡统筹的重庆市农村土地流转研究

随着重庆市成为全国城乡统筹实验区,为了实现城乡的和谐发展,促进农村剩余劳动力的有效转移.如何加快农村土地的流转就成为了更加引人关注的问题.通过分析重庆市现有的农村土地流转的现状.总结现阶段农村土地流转中的特点、出现的问题和制约因素,并针对这些问题,从补充符合地方实际的地方法规、制定鼓励规模经营和保障农民权益的政策、创新农村土地流转经营主体流转模式和完善农村土地流转服务体系等方面提出了相应的建议.     

循环经济发展中的障碍及对策思考

近几年我国循环经济的发展有了较多的实践,也总结出了很多宝贵的经验,但目前仍然存在一些制约循环经济发展的障碍性因素.文章剖析了我国循环经济发展中面对的主要障碍,并提出了几点针对性的建议,以期更好地推进循环经济的发展.     

企业信息化过程中知识转移能力研究

考虑到企业信息化建设过程中知识转移的能力具有灰色性和模糊性的特点,传统的分析方法具有很大的局限性。本文采用基于信息熵权值的多层次灰色评价理论,对信息化过程中知识转移的能力的多级指标体系进行综合评判,为企业提供决策以及改进的依据,最后给出运用该方法的一个实例。该方法具有较强的实际应用价值。     

Financial Development and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Six MENA Countries

This paper examines the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth for six Middle Eastern and North African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia), within a quadvariate vector autoregressive framework. We employ four different measures of financial development and apply the augmented vector autoregression vector (VAR) methodology of Toda and Yamamoto to test for Granger causality. Our empirical results strongly support the hypothesis that finance leads to growth in five out of the six countries. Only in Israel could weak support be found for causality running from economic growth to financial development but no causality in the other direction. These findings suggest the need to accelerate the financial reforms that have been launched since the mid 1980s and to improve the efficiency of these countries’ financial systems to stimulate saving/investment and, consequently, long‐term economic growth.     

Welfare paradox in economic restructuring

It can be proved theoretically that, because of the previously existing price and structural distortion, a welfare paradox is possible in the former command economies during the transition period. This paradox refers to a situation in which a welfare gain is accompanied by a fall in the reported GNP figure.     

论公正及其与自由、平等的关系

尽管学术界对自由、平等和公正问题有许多研究和阐释,但较少将自由、平等与公正问题联系起来从总体上进行考察和研究,以致关于自由、平等和公正及其关系问题成了人们最说不清、道不明的问题。本文试图立足于当代人类社会现实及其走向,着重从与自由、平等相互关联的视角研究公正问题,力求纲要性地对公正及其与自由、平等之间的关系提供一些阐释和见解,最终论证这样一种基本观点:现代公正是一种综合性的价值要求,它要求社会自由和平等,也要求对自由和平等可能导致的社会问题给予适当解决。