VARIANCE BOUND TESTS OF BOND MARKET EFFICIENCY

In this paper we examine variance bound tests of the joint hypothesis that (1) bond markets are efficient and (2) the term structure is determined by the expectations hypothesis. Both the Singleton and Shiller tests are shown to be seriously biased toward rejecting the joint hypothesis in finite samples. Flavin's test is unbiased but has a very high variance leading to many false rejections of the joint hypothesis. When corrected as suggested by Flavin, Shiller's test is unbiased and has a relatively low variance. Unfortunately, it is also sensitive to measurement error.     

Trade and Domestic Policy Linkage in International Agreements*

A central question in discussions of integrating negotiations over domestic policy (e.g., environmental policy or labor standards) into traditional trade agreements is the degree to which the trade policy and domestic policy provisions of an agreement should be explicitly linked. For example, should the World Trade Organization enforce domestic policy obligations with the threat of the suspension of trade concessions? This article considers the conditions under which linking trade and domestic policy agreements within a self‐enforcing agreement is beneficial, and argues that the benefits of such policy linkage may be lower than is commonly thought.     

Intraday Volatility in Interest‐Rate and Foreign‐Exchange Markets: ARCH,Announcement, and Seasonality Effects

We explore the determinants of intraday volatility in interest‐rate and foreign‐exchange markets, focusing on the importance and interaction of three types of information in predicting intraday volatility: (a) knowledge of recent past volatilities (i.e., ARCH or Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity effects); (b) prior knowledge of when major scheduled macroeconomic announcements, such as the employment report or Producer Price Index, will be released; and (c) knowledge of seasonality patterns. We find that all three information sets have significant incremental predictive power, but macroeconomic announcements are the most important determinants of periods of very high intraday volatility (particularly in the interest‐rate markets). We show that because the three information sets are not independent, it is necessary to simultaneously consider all three to accurately measure intraday volatility patterns. For instance, we find that most of the previously documented time‐of‐day and day‐of‐the‐week volatility patterns in these markets are due to the tendency for macroeconomic announcements to occur on particular days and at particular times. Indeed, the familiar U‐shape completely disappears in the foreign‐exchange market. We also find that estimates of ARCH effects are considerably altered when we account for announcement effects and return periodicity; specifically, estimates of volatility persistence are sharply reduced. Separately, our results show that high volatility persists longer after shocks due to unscheduled announcements than after equivalent shocks due to scheduled announcements, indicating that market participants digest information much more quickly if they are prepared to receive it. However, contrary to results from equity markets, we find no evidence of a meaningful difference in volatility persistence after positive or negative price shocks. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 21: 517–552, 2001     

Uncertainty,competition, and costs in corporate bond underwriting

The effect of a syndicate's uncertainty regarding the demand for a new bond issue on the syndicate's choice of an offer and bid price, and on the spread between those two prices, is analyzed. Then, the impact of uncertainty on the spread is empirically tested. The hypothesis that the spread varies inversely with the number of bidders for an issue is also developed and tested, and several other hypothesized determinants of the spread are examined.     

The cross-sectional relation between conditional heteroskedasticity,the implied volatility smile,and the variance risk premium

This paper estimates how the shape of the implied volatility smile and the size of the variance risk premium relate to parameters of GARCH-type time-series models measuring how conditional volatility responds to return shocks. Markets in which return shocks lead to large increases in conditional volatility tend to have larger variance risk premia than markets in which the impact on conditional volatility is slight. Markets in which negative (positive) return shocks lead to larger increases in future volatility than positive (negative) return shocks tend to have downward (upward) sloping implied volatility smiles. Also, differences in how volatility responds to return shocks as measured by GARCH-type models explain much, but not all, of the variations in excess kurtosis and multi-period skewness across different markets.     

Reconsidering the empirical evidence on the Grossman-Helpman model of endogenous protection

Abstract.  The emergence of the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model of endogenous protection as the preëminent model in the political economy of trade literature has been significantly advanced by the finding that its predictions about the cross-industry pattern of protection are broadly consistent with the data. However, in their empirical implementation of the Grossman-Helpman model, researchers have assumed the presence of multiple policy instruments and extraneous political factors. We argue that incorporating these assumptions into the theory significantly changes its predictions about the cross-industry pattern of protection. JEL classification: F1     

How asymmetric is U.S. stock market volatility?

This paper explores differences in the impact of equally large positive and negative surprise return shocks in the aggregate U.S. stock market on: (1) the volatility predictions of asymmetric time-series models, (2) implied volatility, and (3) realized volatility. Following large negative surprise return shocks, both asymmetric time-series models (such as the EGARCH and GJR models) and implied volatility predict an increase in volatility and, consistent with this, ex post realized volatility normally rises as predicted. Following large positive return shocks, asymmetric time-series models predict an increase in volatility (albeit a much smaller increase than following a negative shock of the same magnitude), but both implied and realized volatilities generally fall sharply. While asymmetric time-series models predict a decline in volatility following near-zero returns, both implied and realized volatility are normally little changed from levels observed prior to the stable market. The reasons for the differences are explored.     

The bias in time series volatility forecasts

By Jensen's inequality, a model's forecasts of the variance and standard deviation of returns cannot both be unbiased. This study explores the bias in GARCH type model forecasts of the standard deviation of returns, which we argue is the more appropriate volatility measure for most financial applications. For a wide variety of markets, the GARCH, EGARCH, and GJR (or TGARCH) models tend to persistently over‐estimate the standard deviation of returns, whereas the ARLS model of L. Ederington and W. Guan (2005a) does not. Furthermore, the GARCH and GJR forecasts are especially biased following high volatility days, which cause a large jump in forecast volatility, which is rarely fully realized. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 30:305–323, 2010     

Discriminatory tariffs and international negotiations

Recent research has highlighted the efficiency of the MFN principle within the GATT/WTO structure. This paper analyzes the exception made to MFN within Article XXIII that allows discriminatory punishment for deviations from the agreement. We argue that, in the absence of collusion, the MFN exception reduces the severity of punishment and thus lowers the level of cooperation that can be achieved by the agreement. However, discriminatory punishment may still be beneficial as we show that it reduces the problems associated with the potential for renegotiation during the punishment phase. Finally, we argue that our results are also applicable to the question of whether to use trade policy sanctions as a means of enforcing agreements covering domestic policies.     

Infant industry protection and industrial dynamics

A perennial case for industrial policy is based on the protection of young or emerging industries. Despite a natural association with concepts of life cycles, industrial policy has not been analyzed in the context of an industry life-cycle model. In particular, an important life-cycle characteristic, the potential for very large changes in the rate of net entry, is ignored. In this paper, we demonstrate how the impact of industrial policy depends critically on the entry and exit dynamics within an industry. We construct a model of technology adoption in which the number of firms is endogenous, and derive a set of novel predictions about the effects of protection on firm technology decisions. Specifically, we show that permanent protection can induce earlier adoption, but also decreases the probability that a given firm adopts the new technology. Likewise, we demonstrate that reducing the duration of protection results in faster adoption than permanent protection, but also reduces a given firm's probability of adoption. Finally, we show that, for industries characterized by flexibility in firm numbers, protection does not change the rate of technology adoption but does increase the size and probability of a shakeout (large scale net exit).