How does reinsurance and derivatives usage affect financial performance? Evidence from the UK non-life insurance industry

A three-equation structural model is applied in this study to facilitate our examination of 1994–2011 regulatory returns data on UK non-life insurers, from which we find that those insurers using more reinsurance tended to have inferior financial performance, whilst those insurers with a predisposition towards risk management tended to have used both reinsurance and derivatives. We also find that those insurers with high loss ratios were found to have inferior financial performance. Our analysis sheds some light on the relationships between financial performance, reinsurance and derivative usage.     

金融衍生产品对上市公司风险管理影响实证研究

论文选取有色金属矿产行业以及能源交通运输行业229家上市公司作为样本，以上市公司是否使用衍生产品为解释变量，同时引用一系列控制变量，通过实证分析上市公司使用衍生产品是否会有效降低公司风险。实证过程涉及参数检验、非参数检验、相关性分析和回归分析，实证结果显示我国上市公司使用衍生产品会降低公司风险，这与西方主流的财务管理理论相一致而与我国学者以前的研究相反，由此推测我国上市公司运用衍生产品的能力逐渐娴熟。     

Who benefits in a crisis? Evidence from hedge fund stock and option holdings

We use a unique data set of hedge fund long equity and equity option positions to investigate a significant lockup-related premium earned during the tech bubble (1999–2001) and financial crisis (2007–2009). Net fund flows are significantly greater among lockup funds during crisis and noncrisis periods. Managers of hedge funds with locked-up capital trade opportunistically against flow-motivated trades of non-lockup managers, consistent with a hypothesis of rent extraction in providing crisis era liquidity. The success of this opportunistic trading is concentrated during periods of high borrowing costs, in less liquid stock markets, and is enhanced by hedging in the equity option market.     

Official FX interventions through derivatives

We use high-frequency data to study the effects of currency swap auctions carried out by the Brazilian Central Bank on the USDBRL exchange rate. We find that official currency swap auctions impact the exchange rate in a significant way, even though they do not directly alter the supply of foreign currency in the market. We show that during our sample period auctions of contracts in which the Central Bank took a short position in USD had larger effects than those in which the Central Bank took a long position. The supply of currency swaps to the market provides an alternative for traders that demand foreign currency for financial (speculative or hedging) rather than transactional reasons, and thus affects the demand for foreign currency and its price. This mechanism is likely to be particularly relevant when forecasters extrapolate exchange rate trends at short-term horizons.     

The dark side of financial innovation: A case study of the pricing of a retail financial product

The offering prices of 64 issues of a popular retail structured equity product were, on average, almost 8% greater than estimates of the products' fair market values obtained using option pricing methods. Under reasonable assumptions about the underlying stocks' expected returns, the mean expected return estimate on the structured products is slightly below zero. The products do not provide tax, liquidity, or other benefits, and it is difficult to rationalize their purchase by informed rational investors. Our findings are, however, consistent with the recent hypothesis that issuing firms might shroud some aspects of innovative securities or introduce complexity to exploit uninformed investors.     

Distribution of occupation times for constant elasticity of variance diffusion and the pricing of α-quantile options

The main results of this paper are the derivation of the distribution functions of occupation times under the constant elasticity of variance process. The distribution functions can then be used to price α-quantile options. We also derive the fixed-floating symmetry relation for α-quantile options when the underlying asset price process follows a geometric Brownian motion.     

Strategic timing of earnings announcements?

Using firm‐specific regressions, I show that earnings response coefficient differ across firms. However, there is no evidence of differential earnings response coefficient to a certain earnings announcement time. By switching to a different announcement time from its preferred time, a firm does not gain a softer market reaction. I compare research results from a firm‐specific method and from a pooled time‐series and cross‐sectional method and demonstrate that they differ significantly due to large heterogeneity across firms. I suggest that researchers should adopt a firm‐specific approach to avoid misleading results and to achieve improved estimations.     

浅析我国衍生金融工具所得性质、数量、时间的认定

衍生金融工具所得课税问题是一个国际难题。本文分别从衍生金融工具所得性质的认定、所得数量的认定、所得时间的认定三个方面展开阐述,分析了国际通行的做法,并联系我国实际对衍生金融工具所得课税进行了探讨。     

美国场外衍生品监管规则的演变与改革述评

本文介绍了美国对场外衍生品市场的监管规则和监管改革内容,分析并评论了美国场外衍生品市场的监管改革计划的主要内容和特点,指出其在重要概念、价值计量、结算方式、监管模式和效用、跨国交易、创新和监管关系方面依然存在问题。