The valuation of inflation‐indexed and FX convertible bonds

This paper derives a valuation model of inflation‐indexed convertible bonds that incorporates the firm's stock price, inflation indexing and the firm's credit risk. The pricing of inflation‐indexed convertible bonds traded on the Tel‐Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) was empirically tested by using a comprehensive database. The study is the first to empirically test the pricing of convertibles in emerging markets. It was found that the theoretical values for the bonds are, on average, 1.94% higher than the observed market prices. Unlike previous studies, it was found that the underpricing increases with the moneyness of the convertible. It was found that as the maturity lengthens, the underpricing increases. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:634–655, 2008     

Small Business Credit Scoring and Its Pitfalls: Evidence from Japan

This paper studies the Japanese credit scoring market using data on 2,000 small and medium‐sized enterprises and a small business credit scoring (SBCS) model widely used in the market. After constructing a model for determining a bank's profit maximization, some simulation exercises are conducted, and pitfalls of lending based on SBCS are indicated. The simulation results suggest that the reason why SBCS loan losses occur would be the combination of adverse selection and window‐dressing problems. In addition, omitted variable bias and transparency of financial statements are important.     

MONETARY PRICE RULES FOR ALTERNATIVE STEADY-STATE REGIMES

In the context of elementary models, this study presents an analysis of how disequilibrium can persist. The central result involves a decentralized economy in which agents respond to local excess demand. Attempting to determine the equilibrium inflation rate or its rate of change as well as the equilibrium price level (rather than the latter only) on the basis of excess demand levels alone, is a time consuming process which can lead to cycles. The inflation rate will lag behind its steady-state value resulting in market disequilibrium when the two coincide. Activist policy is required if equilibrium is to be restored without severe unemployment during the transition.     

The monetary explanation of inflation: The experience of three major OPEC economies

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and to test empirically the monetary explanation of inflation in the case of the moderate inflationary experience of three major OPEC economies over the last two decades. The estimated model takes into account the underlying money demand relationship and pays careful attention to the model's lag specifications. The empirical results show that the monetary model of inflation adequately explains the inflationary process in each of the countries studied. These empirical results, furthermore, are econometrically valid insofar as they are not plagued with significant simultaneous-equation bias. In addition, the estimated equations are also found to exhibit structural stability over time.     

THE DIAMOND OF MACROECONOMIC EQUILIBRIA AND NON‐INFLATIONARY EXPANSION

This paper combines the microeconomic foundations of earlier models of a range of equilibrium rates of employment to generate a model with a diamond of equilibria. Analysis of the diamond model shows that for a depressed economy an expansionary aggregate demand policy can, without violating rational expectations of inflation, generate a central proposition of Keynesian economics—a non‐inflationary expansion (NIE), that is a permanent increase in employment without increasing inflation. The microeconomic foundations of the model draw on ideas of customer markets, reference dependence and loss aversion. It is also shown that the possibility of achieving an NIE is enhanced if a macro price policy, such as incomes policy or inflation targeting, accompanies the expansion in aggregate demand.     

TESTING WAGE AND PRICE PHILLIPS CURVES FOR THE UNITED STATES

This paper demonstrates how the labour and product markets interact in determining as outcome a generalized reduced‐form price Phillips curve. For the labour market we consider a wage Phillips curve and for the product market a price Phillips curve. We estimate separately the wage and price Phillips curves for the USA, using ordinary least squares, non‐parametric estimation and three‐stage least squares techniques. The finding is that wages are always more flexible than prices with respect to their respective demand pressure and that price inflation responds somewhat more to a medium‐run cost pressure than does wage inflation. The implications for macroeconomic stability are demonstrated. We also show—as a link between product and labour markets—that employment is related to output as Okun's law states. In comparing linear and non‐linear estimates of the wage and price Phillips curves we find furthermore that for some relationships non‐linearities are important while not for others. Although overall the non‐linear estimates tend to confirm our linear estimates, non‐linearities in some relationships of the Phillips curve are important as well.     

Accelerating Sales in Start‐Ups: A Domain Planning,Network Reliance,and Resource Complementary Perspective

Business planning is central to entrepreneurship and of immense interest in explaining venture development. This study investigates how planning in different functional domains, and network reliance for domain planning, relate to speed of initial sales success. Drawing from a sample of founders in the high‐technology sector, we find differential planning effects—market planning lengthens the time to sales whereas technology planning reduces time to sales. Further, we find that founders' reliance on network sources of help for market planning, relative to solo planning, simultaneously complements both market and technology planning and reduces time to sales. Our findings illustrate domain planning, network reliance, and resource complementarities as important to venture development.     

Inflation Derivatives Under Inflation Target Regimes

Inflation targeting—the central bank practice of attempting to keep inflation levels within fixed bounds around a quantitative target—has been adopted by more than 20 economies. Such practice has an important impact on the stochastic nature of inflation and, consequently, on the pricing of inflation derivatives. We develop a flexible model of inflation targeting in which the central bank's intervention to steer inflation toward the target depends on past deviations and the policymaker's ability and will to enforce the target. We use our model to price inflation derivatives and demonstrate the impact of inflation targeting on derivative pricing.     

Subnational home market bias in Vietnam: Evidence from enterprise‐level data

This paper contributes to the home (market) bias literature where administrative or political borders limit trade across borders. Home bias is well documented at the national and subnational level. To sort out macro (e.g., location characteristics) and micro (e.g., enterprise characteristics) factors behind home bias, we use small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) data from Vietnam. Using the fractional multinomial logit model, we find that the proportion of SME sales outside of their home markets is positively associated with enterprise size, age, number of business association memberships and the distance of SMEs' most important supplier. In contrast, the proportion of SME sales to neighbouring provinces is negatively associated with the share of SME production for final consumption. Besides enterprise‐level frictions, market characteristics matter too. The proportion of SME sales to customers in their home markets is negatively associated with home or neighbouring provinces' governance quality, while the proportion of sales to customers in neighbouring provinces is positively associated with these areas' governance quality. These suggest that good governance frees SME resources for use in selling to less familiar markets.     

Quantitative Easing and Liquidity in the Japanese Government Bond Market

The “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing” enacted immediately after the inauguration of Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda brought violent fluctuations in the prices of government bonds and deteriorated market liquidity. Does a central bank's government bond purchasing policy generally reduce market liquidity? Do conditions exist that can prevent such a decrease? This study analyzes how the Bank of Japan's purchasing policy changes influenced market liquidity. The results reveal that three specific policy changes contributed significantly to improving market liquidity: (i) increased purchasing frequency; (ii) a decrease in the purchase amount per auction; and (iii) reduced variability in the purchase amounts. These policy changes facilitated investors' purchase schedule expectations and helped reduce market uncertainty. The evidence supports the theory that the effect of government bond purchasing policy on market liquidity depends on the market's informational environment.     

MULTIPLICATIVE APPROXIMATION OF WEALTH PROCESSES INVOLVING NO‐SHORT‐SALES STRATEGIES VIA SIMPLE TRADING

A financial market model with general semimartingale asset–price processes and where agents can only trade using no‐short‐sales strategies is considered. We show that wealth processes using continuous trading can be approximated very closely by wealth processes using simple combinations of buy‐and‐hold trading. This approximation is based on controlling the proportions of wealth invested in the assets. As an application, the utility maximization problem is considered and it is shown that optimal expected utilities and wealth processes resulting from continuous trading can be approximated arbitrarily well by the use of simple combinations of buy‐and‐hold strategies.     

Securities as a hedge against inflation: 1910–1969

How well have marketable securities performed as a hedge against inflation?The question is a very old one to which many writers have addressed themselves. The evolutionary nature of financial markets, financial theory, and financial instruments requires continued reevaluation of previous investment decisions. The purpose of this study is to review the performance record of 14 risk classes of securities, which range from long-term government bonds through five different classes of common stock. The average annual investment relatives adjusted for price-level changes are compared for various periods during which the price level is essentially stable, rising, and falling.     

Derivative Ruination in the 1990s: Les Apparences sont Trompeuses

A spectacular financial revolution spanning 20 years created new securities deriving from other securities, which trade in volumes of trillions of dollars in markets, now thought to be the largest and more important in the world. Known as swaps, swaptions, index futures, puttable bonds, collateralized mortgage obligations, stripped bonds, options, and futures, among other exotic names, these financial contracts were designed as a means of laying off risk involving conventional business transactions. This article details massive abuses in the proper use of these insurance products, which resulted in billions of dollars of speculation losses suffered by Procter & Gamble, Gibson Greeting Cards, Orange County California, Metallgesellschaft AG, various‐public employees' retirement funds—and which brought down one of Europe's oldest merchant banks, Barings PLC. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Inflation and Financial Statement Analysis in the International Accounting Classroom

This article provides an exercise for students to contemplate the effects of inflation during financial statement analysis. Even small amounts of inflation accumulating over time can grow to distort a company's reported financial position and results of operations. The growing economies in emerging markets, the international market for oil, and other economic factors threaten to increase inflation rates in the future. As a result of changing global conditions, interest in inflation accounting is expected to increase. The exercise we suggest in this article provides an efficient tutorial on the potential effects of inflation on financial statement analysis and on the application of International Accounting Standard 29 in hyperinflationary environments.     

金融体系流动性传导的外汇视角分析

近两年来,我国经济金融领域出现了较为突出的流动性过剩问题,外汇储备、银行存差和证券价格都出现了大幅的增长和上升。本文通过构建货币分析模型,利用包含一个最近通胀周期的月度数据,运用协整理论和VAR模型检验等方法,通过将外汇储备资产纳入货币存量考察,对金融体系包括外汇市场、银行市场和证券市场之间资金流动和传导的特征进行分析。检验结果表明,以外汇储备衡量的国际收支变化和调节机制并非一种被动的平衡,金融体系三个市场之间存在着较为顺畅的资金传导和流动渠道,在三者的相互传导影响关系中,外汇市场对银行市场和证券市场的影响较大,银行市场对证券市场也有较为显著的影响,而证券市场对其他两个市场的影响则微乎其微。     

ASSET PRICE BUBBLES IN INCOMPLETE MARKETS*

This paper studies asset price bubbles in a continuous time model using the local martingale framework. Providing careful definitions of the asset's market and fundamental price, we characterize all possible price bubbles in an incomplete market satisfying the “no free lunch with vanishing risk (NFLVR)” and “no dominance” assumptions. We show that the two leading models for bubbles as either charges or as strict local martingales, respectively, are equivalent. We propose a new theory for bubble birth that involves a nontrivial modification of the classical martingale pricing framework. This modification involves the market exhibiting different local martingale measures across time—a possibility not previously explored within the classical theory. Finally, we investigate the pricing of derivative securities in the presence of asset price bubbles, and we show that: (i) European put options can have no bubbles; (ii) European call options and discounted forward prices have bubbles whose magnitudes are related to the asset's price bubble; (iii) with no dividends, American call options are not exercised early; (iv) European put‐call parity in market prices must always hold, regardless of bubbles; and (v) futures price bubbles can exist and they are independent of the underlying asset's price bubble. Many of these results stand in contrast to those of the classical theory. We propose, but do not implement, some new tests for the existence of asset price bubbles using derivative securities.     

Optimal bank asset and liability management with financial futures

This paper presents a model for optimal bank asset and liability management with financial futures. This model is a multiperiod linear programming model based on Markowitz portfolio theory. Given the bank's initial position, its economic forecasts, and the constraints under which it operates, the model can help a bank's senior executives determine the current and expected future balance sheet composition and financial futures position which will minimize the bank's operating risks and which will meet the bank's expected profits goal with the minimum possible profits risk. By parametrically varying the expected profits goal, the model will generate the set of risk-return efficient decisions. Bankers need then examine only the set of efficient decisions to choose their optimal solution. A simplified example is used to illustrate the application of our model and to demonstrate that banks that use financial futures in asset and liability management can obtain better results than banks that do not use financial futures.     

Derivatives trading,volatility spillover,and regulation: Evidence from the Korean securities markets

Unlike the U.S. and Japanese securities markets, we find new evidence of volatility spillover between index stocks and non‐index stocks following the introductions of index derivatives trading in the Korean securities markets. We further find that the degree of volatility spillover is closely related to the level of market deregulation; significant return volatility spills over from non‐index to index stocks during deregulation period but in the opposite direction during post‐deregulation period. Our empirical results show that the former volatility spillover from non‐index to index stocks can be explained by the transitory contagion effect associated with the 1997 Korean financial crisis and the subsequent market deregulation, whereas the latter volatility spillover from index to non‐index stocks is attributed to the permanent information spillover effect. This latter evidence suggests that the information regarding investors' expectations on the future common market factors is first reflected into the return volatility of index stocks and then transferred to the trading of non‐index stocks against which derivatives are not traded. Our results are robust to different estimation and sample construction methods. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:563–597, 2009     

Lessons from a Brazilian miracle: Surviving and thriving in a highly inflationary environment

Since the Plano Real was successfully implemented in July 1994, inflation has been curbed to normal proportions in Brazil. Until that moment, Brazil had been a highly inflationary economic environment for decades. It had reached a degree of sophistication by means of complex indexation mechanisms and a myriad of financial instruments that no other highly inflationary country had ever achieved. This article discusses the lessons that can be drawn from the pre-Plano Real period in Brazil. These lessons might prove useful in areas currently confronted with high inflation rates, such as Eastern Europe, and future highly inflationary countries. The article is based on a study among 40 senior executives from a wide variety of economic sectors in Brazil.     

Inflation,R&D and growth in an open economy

This study explores the long-run effects of inflation in a two-country Schumpeterian growth model with cash-in-advance constraints on consumption and R&D investment. We find that increasing domestic inflation reduces domestic R&D investment and the growth rate of domestic technology. Given that economic growth in a country depends on both domestic and foreign technologies, increasing foreign inflation also affects the domestic economy. When each government conducts its monetary policy unilaterally to maximize the welfare of domestic households, the Nash-equilibrium inflation rates are generally higher than the optimal inflation rates chosen by cooperative governments who maximize the welfare of both domestic and foreign households. Under the CIA constraint on R&D (consumption), a larger market power of firms amplifies (mitigates) this inflationary bias. We use cross-country panel data to estimate the effects of inflation on R&D and also calibrate the two-country model to data in the Euro Area and the US to quantify the welfare effects of decreasing the inflation rates from the Nash equilibrium to the optimal level.