Why a simple herding model may generate the stylized facts of daily returns: explanation and estimation

The paper proposes an elementary agent-based asset pricing model that, invoking the two trader types of fundamentalists and chartists, comprises four features: (i) price determination by excess demand; (ii) a herding mechanism that gives rise to a macroscopic adjustment equation for the market fractions of the two groups; (iii) a rush towards fundamentalism when the price misalignment becomes too large; and (iv) a stronger noise component in the demand per chartist trader than in the demand per fundamentalist trader, which implies a structural stochastic volatility in the returns. Combining analytical and numerical methods, the interaction between these elements is studied in the phase plane of the price and a majority index. In addition, the model is estimated by the method of simulated moments, where the choice of the moments reflects the basic stylized facts of the daily returns of a stock market index. A (parametric) bootstrap procedure serves to set up an econometric test to evaluate the model’s goodness-of-fit, which proves to be highly satisfactory. The bootstrap also makes sure that the estimated structural parameters are well identified.     

Prejudice and gender differentials in the US labor market in the last twenty years

Earnings differentials between men and women have experienced a stable convergence during the 1980s, following a process started in the late 1970s. However, in the 1990s the convergence has almost stopped. The first objective of the paper is to evaluate if discrimination, defined as explicit prejudice, may have a role in explaining this slowdown in the convergence. The second objective is to assess whether the prediction of a decrease in the proportion of prejudiced employers implied by the Becker’s model of taste discrimination is taking place and if so at what speed. These objectives are achieved by developing and estimating a search model of the labor market with matching, bargaining, employer’s prejudice and worker’s participation decisions. The results show that the proportion of prejudiced employers is estimated to be decreasing at an increasing speed, going from about 69% in 1985 to about 32% in 2005. Therefore prejudice is not estimated to be a relevant factor in explaining the slower convergence between male and female earnings in the 1990s. The results are consistent with the Becker’s model of taste discrimination if one is willing to assume a very slow adjustment process.     

Unemployment,disequilibrium and the short run phillips curve: An econometric approach

The paper specifies a disequilibrium model for the aggregate labour market consisting of demand and supply functions for labour, an adjustment equation for wages as well as for prices, a transactions equation and, finally, an equation that relates measured unemployment to vacancies and to excess demand. The model has a more sophisticated treatment of dynamics than earlier disequilibrium models. The parameter estimates and the goodness-of-fit are satisfactory and the model's implications for the behaviour of several important variables are sensible. In particular, excess demand estimates computed in various ways are reasonable.     

Tariff-tax reform and exchange rate dynamics in a monetary economy

Using a dynamic monetary model, this paper analyzes the short- and long-run impacts of a tariff-tax reform on the economy, with attention being paid to short-run fluctuations in exchange rates. When a policy reform is announced and if the public believe that it will decrease excess demand, the domestic currency depreciates now to reflect its future depreciation. On the contrary, the domestic currency immediately appreciates if the public believe that it will increase excess demand. However, if there is a relatively small increase in excess demand, the public may mis-react in the exchange rate market by observing currency depreciation first and then appreciation toward the steady-state rate.     

江苏供给侧结构性改革的金融支持政策研究

推进供给侧结构性改革,是适应和引领经济发展新常态的重大创新,是经济发展方式转变和经济结构战略性调整的关键。江苏省实施供给侧结构性改革还需要让市场在资源配置中发挥决定性作用,尤其是要发挥金融市场的力量,借助金融工具盘活金融资源,让资金从产能过剩领域流向供给不足领域。稳健运行的资本市场能够提供最直接的投资机会,及时分享供给侧结构性改革的成果,实现企业和家庭的财富创造。因此,拥有强大的资本市场、创造活跃的金融市场有助于江苏省经济转型的成功和创新能力的提升。     

Locally stable price mechanisms

This paper develops necessary conditions for a price adjustment mechanism to achieve local stability at regular competitive equilibria. Two principal questions are: how closely must a locally stable mechanism be tailored to particular excess demand functions, and can any such mechanism be interpreted as a market adjustment process. In response to the first question, a variant of the (local) Newton method, termed the ‘orthogonal Newton method’ is shown to require, in a dimensional sense, the minimal information about excess demand functions. The second question is answered in the negative by proving the non-existence of any locally stable mechanism with the property that the price of any given commodity is not changed when its own market is in equilibrium. These and other results are obtained by using convergent price paths to generate a homotopy between the adjustment dictated by the mechanism and the actual direction of the equilibrium.     

Learning in a multilateral bargaining experiment

This paper analyzes data from an investigation of a majoritarian bargaining experiment. A learning model is proposed to account for the evolution of play in this experiment. It is also suggested that an adjustment must be made to account for the panel structure of the data. Such adjustments have been used in other fields and are known to be important as unadjusted standard errors may be severely biased downward. These results indicate that this adjustment also has an important effect in this application. Furthermore, an efficient estimator that takes into account heterogeneity across players is proposed. A unique learning model to account for the paths of play under two different amendment rules cannot be rejected with the standard estimator with adjusted standard errors, however it can be rejected using the efficient estimator. The data and the estimated learning model suggest that after proposing “fair” divisions, subjects adapt and their proposals change rapidly in the treatment where uneven proposals are almost always accepted. Their beliefs in the estimated learning model are influenced by more than just the most recent outcomes.     

Productivity, employment and labor demand in Polish industry in the 1980s: Some preliminary results from enterprise-level data

The paper uses annual data from a panel of 334 Polish industrial enterprises over the period 1983–1988 to test empirically a simple neoclassical approach to the socialist labor market. First, an enterprise production function is estimated. The paper finds that for most enterprises, the resulting estimated marginal product of labor exceeds the wage paid by the enterprise by a considerable margin, suggesting general excess demand for labor. The paper then looks at how the difference between the MPL and the wage is related to the rate of change of employment, and finds that firms where the MPL is higher than the wage — firms which in a neoclassical model would have a large excess demand for labor — do not shed labor any more slowly than other firms.     

The Fama-French model for estimating the cost of equity capital: The impact of real options of investment projects

We use the classic and modified Fama-French models to estimate the cost of capital of stock portfolios listed on selected markets. We compare four highly developed markets (US, EU, Japanese and global) and the Polish market as an alternative investment opportunity and a CEE emerging market. The performance of the applied procedures for estimating the cost of capital for company projects is examined and cost of capital is assessed with and without real option adjustment. We adjust the portfolios’ returns using the firms’ book-to-market ratios and idiosyncratic volatility as option proxies. The variability of cost of capital is evaluated using bootstrap methods. Our study shows a clear difference between bootstrapped distributions of cost of capital for the tested developed market and the Polish market portfolios. Wider confidence intervals of the estimated cost of capital of the studied Polish portfolios may result from political motivations in managing state-controlled companies. Our findings also indicate a clear difference between the cost of capital for tested portfolios with and without option adjustment. The widths of the estimated confidence intervals increase after option adjustment. The highest/lowest values of the cost of capital both with and without option adjustment are found for the US/Japanese market portfolios.     

Market Concentration and Multifaceted Productive Efficiency

Developing the analytical framework of the decision making process of a possible entrant, a reduced form system equations model is estimated in order to examine the market concentration – productive efficiency relationship in an endogeneity context. Technical and scale efficiency estimates are obtained from an inter-industry stochastic production frontier using a panel dataset regarding the seven most energy intensive manufacturing industries in Greece over the period 1980–96. Several new versions of the concentration – efficiency relationship, may be derived from the alternatives of the entrant considering the possible conduct character of incumbents’ technical efficiency and excess capacity, which is depicted on their scale efficiency, on market concentration.     

Econometric issues in interpreting Mills' estimates of urban density gradients

Mills has estimated a first order, autoregressive distributed lag model of the process of adaptation of urban density gradients. The error term in such equations estimated by ordinary least squares is likely autocorrelated, biasing upward the estimated coefficient of the lagged dependent variable. A specification error may be concealed, with autocorrelation in the error term resulting in overestimates of the length of the adjusted lag. Longer time series samples will be required if the nature of the lagged adjustment processes and the error term are to be simultaneously estimated.     

Transaction Costs and Nonlinear Adjustment Towards Equilibrium in the US Treasury Bill Market

This paper uses nonlinear error correction models to study yield movements in the US Treasury Bill Market. Nonlinear error correction arises because portfolio adjustment is an ‘on-off’ process, which occurs only when disequilibrium in the bill market is large enough to induce investors to incur the transaction costs associated with buying/selling bills. This, together with heterogeneity of transaction costs, implies that the strength of aggregate error correction depends on both the distribution of costs and the extent of disequilibrium in the market. Smooth transition models are used to describe an aggregate adjustment process which is strong when the market is distant from equilibrium, but becomes weaker as the market approaches equilibrium. Linearity tests indicate that the types of nonlinearities that would be induced by transactions costs are statistically significant, and estimated models which incororate these nonlinearities outperform their linear counterparts, both in sample and out of sample.     

Investment Frictions and the Aggregate Output Loss in China

Investment frictions reduce, delay or protract investment expenditure that is necessary for firms to capture growth opportunities. Using a capital adjustment costs framework, this article estimates the gap between China's actual and frictionless aggregate output. It applies the method of simulated moments to a fully structural investment model on a panel of Chinese firms and takes into account potential unobserved heterogeneities and measurement error in the data. The estimated capital adjustment costs imply that if Chinese firms had faced a lower level of adjustment costs such as in the US, China's aggregate output would be 25% higher.     

Is there an equilibrating relationship between house prices and replacement cost? Empirical evidence from Berlin

It is a feature of competitive markets with forward-looking participants that a good’s benefit and its production cost are equalized in equilibrium and that no resources are wasted during the adjustment process. For housing markets, there is mixed evidence whether they meet this standard of allocative efficiency. Based on a unique data set with rich information on prices and cost, we examine the market for single-family houses in Germany’s capital Berlin. At the aggregate market level, we find that prices and cost tend to equalize in the long run. Short-run adjustment appears to be sufficiently fast and properly anticipated to prevent systematic excess profit opportunities. At the cross sectional level of individual houses, we find support that resources are allocated efficiently between different market segments. Taken together, our results provide sufficient evidence that the market in Berlin is efficient.     

一类价格调整问题的数学模型及其求解方法

虽然市场需求是价格的函数，但企业在价格调整实践中往往不能直接获取需求函数的具体表达式，而只能在某一给定价格水平下观察到市场需求量的值。因此，企业通常不能直接利用需求函数来调整价格以完成预期的市场需求调整的战略计划。本文将企业为达到市场需求战略调整目的而考虑的价格调整问题归结为一个隐式互补问题。在该模型中，企业可以依据自身经营战略目标的调整相应地调整各类产品的市场价格，使得价格调整后的产品销量迭到预定的目标。文章给出了求解这类隐式互补问题的直接迭代法，并给出了数值结果。     

On the existence,uniqueness and stability of spatial equilibrium in an open city with externalities

This paper deals with the existence, uniqueness and stability of a spatial equilibrium in an open city with external diseconomies like air pollution generated by manufacturing activities. First, assuming that both production functions and utility functions are Cobb-Douglas, we prove the existence of a spatial equilibrium under some reasonable assumptions. It is shown, however, that the uniqueness and stability of the equilibrium may not be obtained, unless the degree of externality is sufficiently small. In fact, none of the equilibria will be stable for a certain set of speeds of adjustment in the labor market and the land market, if the degree of externality is relatively large. Finally, some implications of our results are derived in regard to the application of the hedonic price concept within the context of a spatial equilibrium model.     

Testing a discrete switching disequilibrium model of the UK labour market

This paper develops a test procedure for serial correlation for discrete switching disequilibrium models which include both an endogenous price adjustment equation and lagged dependent variables. The tests are applied to a model of the UK labour market and the model is respecified in the light of the test results.     

Itchy feet vs cool heads: Flow of funds in an agent-based financial market

Investors tend to move funds when they are unhappy with their current portfolio managers׳ performance. We study the effect of the size of this flow of funds in an agent-based model of the financial market. The model combines the discrete choice approach from agent-based modelling, where all capital is mobile, with the evolutionary finance framework where all growth is endogenous. Our results show that, if investors exhibit recency bias in evaluating portfolio managers׳ performance, even a small amount of freely flowing capital has a huge impact on the market dynamics and the survival of noise traders. We also find that investors׳ intensity of choice is a driving force for excess volatility and extreme price movements when the size of the flow of funds is large.     

Racial prejudice in a search model of the urban housing market

A simple model of buyer search in an urban housing market is employed to demonstrate that if some whites are unwilling to sell housing to blacks competitive equilibria in which blacks pay more for housing than whites are sustainable. The model is also used to consider a number of issues in the literature on housing discrimination. Most important, it is shown that in equilibrium the housing market will be racially segmented under a wide variety of conditions.     

Retrieving the implicit risk neutral density of WTI options with a semi-nonparametric approach

This paper contributes to the literature on the estimation of the Risk Neutral Density (RND) function by proposing a log-semi-nonparametric (log-SNP) distribution as the implicit RND when the Gram-Charlier model is used for option pricing. The performance of the model is compared to the lognormal (Black Scholes) benchmark for a sample of option prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil that were traded in the period between January 2016 and December 2017. Results show that the lognormal specification tends to systematically undervalue option prices and that the proposed log-SNP distribution, which explicitly adjusts for negative skewness and excess kurtosis, results in markedly improved accuracy, especially in periods of market instability. As a result, the implied skewness and excess kurtosis are relevant sources of information on market expectations that should be used for hedging and risk management purposes.