“寡头”市场结构、贸易媒介与贸易商品定价——分析框架及基于棉花贸易史的案例研究

中国在贸易中面临"寡头"地位确立与定价权缺失共存的困境,通过提出一个引入贸易媒介环节的三分法贸易商品定价框架对此进行解释。贸易商品定价受到"寡头"国家/政府政策作用于贸易媒介市场结构程度的影响,还依赖于出口国/进口国的微观市场结构状况。贸易媒介通过与生产者和消费者的定价博弈选择使其利润最大化的买卖价格,政府政策/私人保护通过影响贸易媒介市场结构间接影响贸易商品定价。利用典型的英美棉花贸易"双寡头"案例,通过价格变动的相对弹性、转嫁系数和Granger因果检验三种方法定量分析了英美棉花贸易的定价博弈,计量结果与三分法分析结果完全符合,为论文提出的分析框架提供了例证支持。     

EXISTENCE OF A NONNEGATIVE EQUILIBRIUM PRICE VECTOR IN THE MEAN-VARIANCE CAPITAL MARKET

We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a nonnegative equilibrium price vector under which the total demand and supply of each asset balances in the standard mean-variance capital market. Also, we give an explicit formula for such a price vector. This formula shows that the price of assets is an increasing function of , the weighted average of the requested rate of return of individual investors, which tends to infinity as approaches the expected rate of return on the market portfolio. Further, we construct a macroeconomic index which gives information about the soundness of the capital market.     

Asian option pricing with orthogonal polynomials

In this paper we derive a series expansion for the price of a continuously sampled arithmetic Asian option in the Black–Scholes setting. The expansion is based on polynomials that are orthogonal with respect to the log-normal distribution. All terms in the series are fully explicit and no numerical integration nor any special functions are involved. We provide sufficient conditions to guarantee convergence of the series. The moment indeterminacy of the log-normal distribution introduces an asymptotic bias in the series, however we show numerically that the bias can safely be ignored in practice.     

Q‐FACTORS IN EMPIRICAL ASSET PRICING: A REVIEW AND SYNTHESIS

The latest development in the asset pricing literature is the emergence of empirical asset pricing models comprising q‐factors (profitability and investment factors) in conjunction with other factors. However, as in the case of the older empirical models, there is scepticism regarding the application of these newer factor models consisting of q‐factors because of the debate surrounding the explanatory power of these empirically inspired asset pricing models. This review attempts to synthesize studies pertaining to the four alternative explanations of the asset pricing models comprising the q‐factors (profitability and investment) – the data snooping hypothesis, the risk‐based explanation, the irrational investor behaviour explanation and the interpretation that suggest that the combination of the risk‐free asset and the factors comprising the model span the mean‐variance efficient tangency portfolio that prices the universe of assets.     

Price premiums for organic menus at restaurants: What is an acceptable level?

This study identifies acceptable premium price levels that customers would be willing to pay for organic menu items at restaurants in the United States. Previous literature indicates that health-related and socio-demographic characteristics significantly influence consumers’ intentions to purchase organic food. To advance our understanding of how different consumers respond to changes in organic food prices, this study examines the moderating effects of the level of health consciousness (high versus low), gender (male versus female), and age (young versus old) on the relationship between premium price levels and purchasing intentions. In addition, this study further investigates acceptable premium price levels for different consumer segments at two types of restaurants (casual dining versus fine dining). The results of this study provide guidelines for menu design and strategies for restaurateurs to devise effective price premiums for organic menu options.     

Optimal granularity for portfolio choice

Many optimization-based portfolio rules fail to beat the simple 1/N rule out-of-sample because of parameter uncertainty. In this paper we suggest a grouping strategy in which we first form groups of equally weighted stocks and then optimize over the resulting groups only. This strategy aims at balancing the trade-off between the benefits from optimization and the losses from estimation risk. We rely on Monte-Carlo simulations to illustrate the performance of the strategy, and we derive the optimal group size for a simplified setup. Furthermore, we show that estimation risk also has an impact via the criterion by which the assets are sorted into groups (like the expected excess returns or betas), but does not negate the grouping approach. We relate our work to linear asset pricing models, and we conduct out of sample back-tests in order to confirm the validity of our grouping strategy empirically.     

考虑消费者行为的易逝品动态定价研究

在消费者有限理性行为上考虑其策略型和短视型的不同特征，在非理性行为上考虑支付意愿、风险偏好及参考价格三个衡量维度，综合构建消费者效用函数，研究了在消费者行为异质作用下，易逝品零售商的动态定价，并运模拟算例对上述研究进行了演算。研究表明：消费者风险偏好程度较高时，零售商收益会随着策略消费者比例和消费者估值折扣系数的增大而减小，风险偏好较低时可缓解或消除策略消费者的不利影响；零售商的最优定价策略为降价策略；第二阶段消费者产品获得率会对零售商收益产生影响。     

Hedonic pricing and the spatial structure of housing data – an application to Berlin

Housing prices are largely determined by physical location. By applying the outsample prediction accuracy of rental prices as evaluation criteria, we examine whether the choice of the hedonic model additionally depends on the spatial structure of housing data, i.e. accounting for locational effects by either district fixed effects or spatial econometric modelling. Our results show that a generalised spatio-temporal model outperforms a district fixed effects model only if the spatial density – the weighted mean distance to nearest neighbours – is relatively small. Moreover, we use the required density thresholds to deduce a pseudo indifference curve, thereby showing that the ratio of the weighted spatial distance-to-the mean district diameter increases with the mean sample size per district. This emphasises the role of data structure and district choices for model selection. Differences in data can thereby serve as an explanation for contradictory findings in literature, whether spatial econometric methods or simple district fixed effects are used.     

Regime switching rough Heston model

This model combines two important stylized features of volatility, the rough behavior consistent with a Hurst parameter less than , and the regime switching property consistent with more long-term economic considerations. It is nevertheless highly tractable in the sense of semianalytic formulae for European options, and permits a partial Monte Carlo method of similar computational speed as the semianalytic formula (at an appropriate number of Monte Carlo simulations). While option prices are relatively insensitive to the choice of Hurst parameter, introducing rough volatility allows for a better fit to the at-the-money skew.