Steep increase in oil prices as gulf crisis lingers on

Following a brief interruption, the recovery in world commodity prices witnessed during the first months of the year has continued. Crude oil prices reached their highest level for 16 months. The increase in prices for industrial raw materials that began early this year, however, came to a complete standstill. With the world economy recovering more slowly, can commodity prices be expected to fall again?     

Do private labels increase retailer bargaining power?

Like any new product, private label entry increases competition within a category leading to downward pressure on both wholesale and retail prices. But, given the higher margins for private labels and potential bargaining benefits for retailers, they have incentives to help private labels gain market share. The paper addresses two questions: First, do private labels enhance a retailer’s bargaining power with respect to manufacturers? Second, given the higher profitability and potential increase in bargaining power, does the retailer strategically set retail prices to favor and strengthen the private label? We find support for the “bargaining power” hypothesis, but qualified support for the “strategic retailer pricing” hypothesis. Retailers gain bargaining power through lower wholesale prices on imitated national brands. But the gain is greater in niche categories than in mass categories, suggesting that niche national brands with limited “pull” power lose greater bargaining power. In terms of strategic pricing, the retailer, on initially introducing the private label, strategically sets prices to help private labels gain market share in high volume mass market categories. But retail prices revert to the category profit maximizing price after a year when the private label gains a stable market share.     

Bearish mood on world commodity markets

For two years now the international raw materials markets have been characterised by a lasting slump. The weak and short-lived reactions to the Falklands crisis and to the intensification of hostilities between Israel and its Arab neighbours are indicative of the situation. During this year's summer months prices on markets for industrial raw materials and food and tropical beverages hit their lowest level since spring 1978. What are the prospects for the development of raw materials prices?     

我国证券市场噪声交易问题分析

“老鼠仓”是我国资本市场的特有现象,由于我国的资本市场是新兴的市场,存在普遍的不规范现象,机构投资者之间的博弈会对资本市场的价格波动造成巨大影响。本文利用DSSW模型讨论了存在“老鼠仓”条件下,噪声交易者的收益变动,并得出相应的启示。     

纺织服装——震荡潜行

2011年,纺织服装行业产品出口的生存条件比金融危机前不会有本质性的改观。     

Commodity Prices Recede from Record Highs

Several commodity prices appear to have peaked earlier this year and crude oil prices have even fallen by more than 10 dollars per barrel from their recent all-time high level. Is the worst over for buyers of raw materials or will prices rise again in the coming months?     

The History of Electricity Restructuring in California

This paper aims to provide an objective history of electricity restructuring in California from the mid-1990s to the immediate end of the “California Energy Crisis” in June 2001. We discuss the restructuring debate that led to the restructuring law (AB1890), and describe how the new structure worked after it took effect in April 1998. We discuss the course of events during the crisis, and factors contributing to it, including the supply-demand balance in California and in the West, rising gas prices, the complexity of the market design, market power, and the regulatory decision to cap retail but not wholesale prices.     

What’s in a price? The American raw cotton market in Liverpool and the Anglo-American War

This article argues that an embryonic futures market was present in Liverpool during the Anglo-American War. The analysis of a previously unseen data-set of printed Prices Currents has facilitated not only a price series of raw cotton prices, but an in-depth analysis of the ‘construction’ of those raw cotton prices. By positing a definition of an embryonic futures market and then analysing each of the features of a such a market in turn, this study demonstrates the existence of an embryonic futures market in early nineteenth-century Liverpool.     

Raw materials prices under pressure

Since April 1984 there has been a general fall in world market prices for industrial raw materials following upon increases which, in some cases, had been quite considerable. What are the reasons for this development? What are the prospects for 1985?     

Toward A Convergence Theory For Continuous Stochastic Securities Market Models1

This article reviews some recently developed approximation schemes for financial markets with continuous trading. Two methods for approximating continuous-time stochastic securities market models whose exogenously given prices have continuous sample paths are described and compared One method approximates both the paths and the information structure; the other is an approximation in distribution with a Markovian structure. In both cases, the approximating models have a finite state space, discrete time, and possess the same “structural” properties (e.g., “no arbitrage” and “completeness”) as the continuous model. the latter characteristic is an important criterion for judging the merits of the approximations. Taking advantage of the “structure-preserving” characteristic, one can formulate a convergence theory for frictionless markets with continuous trading. the theory provides convergence results for objects such as contingent claim prices, replicating portfolio strategies (hedging policies), optimal consumption policies, and cumulative financial gains (i.e., stochastic integrals), which are constructed along the approximation. the convergence theory enables one to combine the intuitive appeal of discrete models and the analytic tractability of continuous models to provide new insight into the theory of modern financial markets. We survey the current state of such a convergence theory and illustrate the results with some examples of well-known continuous securities market models.     

论鲜活农产品市场流通与价格决定——来自蔬菜市场的观察

文章从鲜活农产品市场流通过程中存在消费者和生产者“福利双损”这一社会现象出发,基于开放市场条件下的基础经济假设,采用数理模型推演、案例分析和自回归模型,对当前我国蔬菜流通中价值链构成问题和蔬菜价格走势的核心决定因素进行了深入分析。研究结果表明,受制于终端零售者的规模及鲜活农产品的市场出清特征,蔬菜终端零售费用占比相对过高的现象不可避免;同时,由于蔬菜价格是均衡经济系统内生决定的,而时间序列模型也说明了蔬菜价格与经济系统的高度一致性。因此,从蔬菜市场宏观调控的政策出发,“使市场机制在资源配置中起决定性作用”,容忍蔬菜价格的周期性波动,实际上是经济最优选择。     

TIME‐CONSISTENT AND MARKET‐CONSISTENT EVALUATIONS

We consider evaluation methods for payoffs with an inherent financial risk as encountered for instance for portfolios held by pension funds and insurance companies. Pricing such payoffs in a way consistent to market prices typically involves combining actuarial techniques with methods from mathematical finance. We propose to extend standard actuarial principles by a new market‐consistent evaluation procedure which we call “two‐step market evaluation.” This procedure preserves the structure of standard evaluation techniques and has many other appealing properties. We give a complete axiomatic characterization for two‐step market evaluations. We show further that in a dynamic setting with continuous stock prices every evaluation which is time‐consistent and market‐consistent is a two‐step market evaluation. We also give characterization results and examples in terms of g‐expectations in a Brownian‐Poisson setting.     

AN EQUILIBRIUM GUIDE TO DESIGNING AFFINE PRICING MODELS

The paper examines equilibrium models based on Epstein–Zin preferences in a framework in which exogenous state variables follow affine jump diffusion processes. A main insight is that the equilibrium asset prices can be computed using a standard machinery of affine asset pricing theory by imposing parametric restrictions on market prices of risk, determined inside the model by preference and model parameters. An appealing characteristic of the general equilibrium setup is that the state variables have an intuitive and testable interpretation as driving the consumption and dividend dynamics. We present a detailed example where large shocks (jumps) in consumption volatility translate into negative jumps in equilibrium prices of the assets as agents demand a higher premium to compensate for higher risks. This endogenous “leverage effect,” which is purely an equilibrium outcome in the economy, leads to significant premiums for out‐of‐the‐money put options. Our model is thus able to produce an equilibrium “volatility smirk,” which realistically mimics that observed for index options.     

融资约束、过度投资与现金流的价格敏感性

已有研究证实了盈余管理、会计稳健性以及边际投资收益递减规律均可能影响应计成分的持续性,揭示了资本市场对盈余的应计成分不存在“功能锁定”现象,但鲜有研究关注盈余的现金流成分与股价关系的影响因素。文章发现,过度投资会显著地降低现金流的价格敏感性,且对于现金持有水平高及融资约束程度高的公司,过度投资对现金流价格敏感性的影响更为显著。文章的研究结论一方面从经营活动现金流的价格敏感性视角揭示了过度投资的负面经济后果,另一方面也证实了市场对经营活动现金流同样不存在“功能锁定”现象。     

The Dynamics of Local Markets: A Case Study of Cameras

Longitudinal data on the availability and prices of two related products in a local market are used to assess the dynamic performance of the markets for these products. Consistent with prior research, a large degree of price dispersion was found for both products. There was some evidence of a modest reduction in price dispersion over time, and of the lowest quality models to “drop out” of the market. Store quality differences and likely search costs did not appear to explain the remaining dispersion.     

Asian demand pushes up commodity prices

Dollar prices for industrial raw materials have increased along a wide front, and oil prices are almost as high as they were before the Iraq war. Due to the weak dollar, however, consumers in the euro area have been relatively unaffected so far. Demand for raw materials will remain strong. Must we brace ourselves for a further sharp increase in commodity prices?     

STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY MODELS AND THE PRICING OF VIX OPTIONS

In this paper, we examine and compare the performance of a variety of continuous‐time volatility models in their ability to capture the behavior of the VIX. The “3/2‐ model” with a diffusion structure which allows the volatility of volatility changes to be highly sensitive to the actual level of volatility is found to outperform all other popular models tested. Analytic solutions for option prices on the VIX under the 3/2‐model are developed and then used to calibrate at‐the‐money market option prices.     

Hit and Run or Sit and Wait? Contestability Revisited in a Price-Comparison Site-Mediated Market

The price-comparison site, with its (near-)zero sunk costs of entry, would appear to approximate the “almost perfectly contestable market” envisaged by the contestability theorists where “hit-and-run” entry was conjectured to constrain sellers to zero-profit outcomes. We investigate hit and run using a unique unbalanced panel of 295 digital-camera markets mediated by NexTag.com. We find, however, in line with Farrell (1986a)’s prediction, a bifurcation of strategies with low reputation/smaller participants favouring a hit-and-run strategy involving lower entry prices and shorter forays into the market than their high reputation/larger rivals. Furthermore, the former entrants induce a much larger price response from low-reputation incumbents, reflecting the more intense rivalry for the price-sensitive consumers willing to eschew retailer reputations.     

Developments in the international distribution of income

The question of income distribution played a very important role in practical and theoretical development policy during the seventies. World market conditions were blamed for the fact that the income gap between industrialised countries and developing countries was widening. The demands to which this has given rise range from calls for “greater reliance on market forces”, “modification of the market form” and “greater market intervention” to insistence on the complete abolition of free market relationships. How has the relative income position of various groups of developing countries evolved in the last few decades?     

Error Reduction in Distributed DSS Through Coordination of Modeling Activities: Simulation Study

It is well known that the “lemon” problem can cause market failure. Because difficulties in quality discovery of nonstandardized and complex products will increase transaction costs, it was predicted that the “electronic market” would prevail only with less complex and more standardized goods. However, it has been observed that there are many successful electronic (auction) markets for seemingly typical “lemon” goods such as used cars, raw minerals, and agricultural products. It is argued that in such markets, the equilibrium price of electronic trading appeared higher than in the nonelectronic market. Many speculative explanations have been offered for this, but to the best of our knowledge, no analytical studies have been presented. This study is an attempt to fill this gap. In this paper, we look at the problem of quality discovery in the electronic trading of physical goods especially when the goods are not standardized. The information asymmetry between buyer and seller creates the possibility of a “lemon” in the nonstandardized market. To mitigate this problem, several auction markets have devised third party quality grading systems and limited auctions to only relatively higher quality products. Through analytical modeling, we rationalize these mechanisms; that is, the intervention of an impartial third party for quality inspection, market segmentation by quality measure, and the sellers' willingness to pay the cost of quality inspection.