Dynamic price discovery in Chinese agricultural futures markets

Research has not fully explored how Chinese agricultural futures markets perform their price discovery function over time. Our paper examines the role of Chinese agricultural futures markets in the price discovery process based on three well-established measurements of average price discovery contribution, and more importantly, the dynamic price discovery measurement. Using daily futures and spot prices from fourteen agricultural commodities, we find eleven contracts are efficient in price discovery. Besides, market-oriented changes in policies strengthen the price discovery performance of most futures markets, except for commodities that rely heavily on imports from other countries. Our results also suggest that trading activity is particularly important in determining whether thinly traded contracts are efficient in price discovery. Our paper provides a comprehensive judgment involving both average and dynamic price discovery contribution measurements on assessing the efficiency of Chinese agricultural futures markets. Our results might also serve as a reminder that market-oriented reforms in the spot markets of commodities might be useful to intensify the pricing power of the futures markets.     

Intra- and international commodity market integration in the Atlantic economy, 1800-1913

In this paper, the course of intra- and international market integration in the nineteenth century Atlantic economy is investigated. The most fundamental contribution of the paper is in consistently sketching the course of commodity market integration over the long run. Additionally, this study suggests that the nineteenth century has been somewhat misread in terms of the development of markets as the evidence, especially on price convergence, points to dramatic improvements in intra- and international market integration in the years prior to the mid-century. A collective task for economic historians, then, is to link these developments with the revolutionary commercial and technological developments of the post-1850 period.     

上海原油期货与国际原油期货:联动机制和溢出效应

建立VECM—GARCH—BEKK—T模型,分析了上海原油期货价格与WTI、布伦特两大国际基准油价格之间的传导效应、均值溢出效应、波动溢出效应、BEKK交叉效应以及杠杆效应。研究发现,上海、WTI和布伦特原油期货三个市场存在显著的均值溢出和波动溢出效应。其中,上海原油期货上市重构了WTI和布伦特原油期货两个市场的均衡关系、主导影响因素、影响期限以及波动溢出效应;上海原油期货与国际油价有机联动,对WTI的正向影响要大于对布伦特的影响,但WTI、布伦特对上海的影响依然占主导地位。此外,短期内,当期上海原油期货价格与历史WTI和上海原油期货价格波动联系显著为正,而与历史布伦特原油期货价格则显著为负。因此,需要在持续提高上海原油期货参与者数量、提高国际参与度和认可度、完善原油期货区间波段管理机制、提升原油期货交易量、加快人民币国际化进程等方面努力。     

Macroeconomics of Agricultural Trade Liberalization

Abstract

In this article a macroeconomic model is built to examine interactions between the agricultural sector and the industrial sector in an emerging market economy. This article examines how monetary shock and real shocks produce agricultural price fluctuations and change in employment through multiple cross effects. Monetary shocks result in overshooting of primary commodity price while real shock in terms of rise in the production of primary commodity mitigates the volatility of primary price.     

Volatility Relationship between Crude Oil and Petroleum Products

This paper utilizes calculated historical volatility and GARCH models to compare the historical price volatility behavior of crude oil, motor gasoline and heating oil in U.S. markets since 1990. We incorporate a shift variable in the GARCH/TARCH models to capture the response of price volatility to a change in OPEC’s pricing behavior. This study has three major conclusions. First, there was an increase in volatility as a result of a structural shift to higher crude oil prices after April 1999. Second, volatility shocks from current news are not important since GARCH effects dominate ARCH effects in the variance equation. Third, persistence of volatility in all commodity markets is quite transitory, with half-lives normally being a few weeks.

The Efficiency of the Chinese Commodity Futures Markets： Development and Empirical Evidence

I. Introduction In the early 1980s China set about transforming its moribund economy by adopting, in stages, various elements of the market-based systems. Among the reforms were thederegulation of prices and the introduction of financial markets for assets. The first stock market was set up in Shanghai in 1991 and in the same year the first commodities market opened in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Since then, both the stock market and the commodities futures markets have expanded substantiall…     

Emerging Impact of Chinese Commodity Futures Market on Domestic and Global Economy

In this paper we construct a set of indices that capture the special features of the Chinese commodity futures market for the period from January 2000 to December 2011 to analyze the general properties of China＇s commodity futures market. Using these indices we investigate the risk premiums of Chinese commodity futures and verify that the commodity futures can act as an effective diversification tool for Chinese asset management. It is found that the commodity futures can hedge both expected and unexpected inflation in China, and agricultural commodity futures are found to signal inflation 2 months beforehand. Finally, we explore the relationship between Chinese and US commodity futures markets in the years 2000 and 2010, and find that their interactions strengthen over time. Our research reveals an increasingly important role of the Chinese commodity futures market in both the domestic and the global economy. Some policy changes are suggested in response to this trend.     

The effect of index futures trading on volatility: Three markets for Chinese stocks

This paper examines whether the introduction of Chinese stock index futures had an impact on the volatility of the underlying spot market. To this end, we estimate several Generalized Auto-regressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models and compare our findings for mainland China with Chinese index futures traded in Singapore and Hong Kong. Our results indicate that Chinese index futures decrease spot market volatility in all three spot markets considered. In contrast, we do not obtain the same results for the companion index futures markets in Hong Kong and Singapore. China's stock market is relatively young and largely dominated by private retail investors. Nevertheless, our evidence is favorable to the stabilization hypothesis usually confirmed in mature markets.     

Rise and Fall of the First Financial Futures Market in China： The Case of Chinese Government Bond Futures

This paper studies the rise and fall of the first financial futures market in China. We compare the characteristics in the Chinese Government bond futures market with those in the US T-bond futures market. They differ in market design and structure, market governance, margin requirements, position limits, delivery process, and the way in which the settlement price is calculated. Furthermore, with a unique dataset, we show that prior to maturities of government bond futures, traders began to accumulate significant amounts of long positions for several selected contracts without the intention to offset, forcing short position holders to either purchase deliverable bonds or offset futures at highly inflated prices, causing higher market volatility and price disequilibrium in both spot and futures markets. Arbitrage opportunity arises and the market eventually collapses. The lessons learned from the suspension of the Chinese Government bond futures market offer an invaluable learning experience.     

涨跌停板对中国商品期货市场效率影响实证研究

运用上海、郑州、大连期货交易所近六年日交易数据,实证研究涨跌停板制度对我国商品期货市场效率的影响。结论表明,涨（跌）停限制干扰了交易的正常进行,阻碍了信息传递,降低了我国商品期货市场效率,并且涨（跌）停所造成的价格延迟效应一般会延续到第二天。在此基础上,比较分析了与其他市场的异同,提出了相应的政策建议。     

国际商品市场中"一价定律"的验证:共同概率模型和动态贸易变量

本文讨论并引伸了Barrett和Li(2002)提出的共同概率模型,在原有基础上将贸易变量动态化,以增加在经验分析中所包含的信息量和解释能力。考虑到国际商品贸易的跨期性,我们的预期价格采用了商品期货价。我们用改进后的方法对中美大豆贸易做了实证分析,发现两国大豆市场自1995年以来基本上是整合的,并发现对竞争性均衡关系的偏离主要发生在早期,即在中国商品期货市场完善和农产品市场体制改革之前。研究还发现两国大豆价差在南美豆收获期后明显缩小。收益不确定性参数的t检验不显著在一定程度上表明了进口商对价格风险的规避行为。     

FAIR VALUE PRICING OF AGRICULTURAL FUTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA

In the South African agricultural (specifically grain) markets an interesting phenomenon exists: where futures and options on grain products exist (i.e. white maize, yellow maize, soy beans, wheat, and sunflower seeds) price discovery in the spot (also known as “cash”) markets is poor, whereas price discovery in the futures markets is considered respectable. Consequently, whenever a spot deal is undertaken, this price is “derived” from the relevant futures market. This severely anomalous phenomenon will be evident: futures are generally labeled “derivatives” because their prices are “derived” from their spot markets, whereas here we have a situation where spot prices are derived from their futures price (specifically the price of the near – as opposed to far – future). Because of this unusual phenomenon the mathematics involved is not readily available in the literature; this article is an attempt to briefly outline the phenomenon and to present the relevant mathematics.     

Global food prices and monetary policy in an emerging market economy: The case of India

This paper investigates a perception in the political debates as to what extent poor countries are affected by price movements in the global commodity markets. To test this perception, we use the case of India to establish in a standard SVAR model that global food prices influence aggregate prices and food prices in India. To further analyze these empirical results, we specify a small open economy New-Keynesian model including oil and food prices and estimate it using observed data over the period 1996Q2 to 2013Q2 by applying Bayesian estimation techniques. The results suggest that a big part of the variation in inflation in India is due to cost-push shocks and, mainly during the years 2008 and 2010, also to global food price shocks, after having controlled for exogenous rainfall shocks. We conclude that the inflationary supply shocks (cost-push, oil price, domestic food price and global food price shocks) are important contributors to inflation in India. Since the monetary authority responds to these supply shocks with a higher interest rate which tends to slow growth, this raises concerns about how such output losses can be prevented by reducing exposure to commodity price shocks.     

COMMODITY PRICE SHOCKS AND THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY SINCE FEDERATION*

Australia has experienced frequent and large commodity export price shocks similar to commodity exporters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but this price volatility has had much more modest impact on economic performance. Why? This paper explores Australian terms of trade volatility since 1901. It identifies two major price shock episodes before the recent mining‐led boom and bust. It assesses their relative magnitude, their impact on de‐industrialisation and distribution during the booms, and the labour market and policy responses to the shocks. Australia has indeed responded differently to volatile commodity prices than have other commodity exporters.     

Price Common Volatility or Volume Common Volatility? Evidence from Taiwan's Exchange Rate and Stock Markets

This paper investigates the common volatility structure of stock and exchange rate markets of Taiwan. The two markets are often linked together and we are interested in knowing whether price or volume is a good proxy to pursue this issue. We claim that Taiwanese government interventions distort the timing of conventional price volatility clustering in the two markets. The unrestricted trading volumes reveal more information regarding the market than price. We find that common volatility does exist in the stock and exchange markets and this fact is uncovered more easily by using trading volume than by using prices.     

Global commodity prices and global stock market volatility shocks: Effects across countries

We investigate the time-varying dynamics of global stock market volatility, commodity prices, domestic output and consumer prices. We find (i) stock market volatility and commodity price shocks impact each other and the economy in a gradual and endogenous adjustment process, (ii) impact of commodity price shock on global stock market volatility is significant during global financial crises, (iii) effects of global stock market volatility on the US output are amplified by endogenous commodity price responses, (iv) effects of global stock market volatility shocks on the economy are heterogeneous across nations and relatively larger in twelve developed countries, (v) four developing/small economies are more vulnerable to commodity price shocks.     

期货市场涨跌停板制度效率问题研究——大连黄大豆1号期货市场的经验证据

本文从波动性溢出效应假设、延迟价格发现效应假设以及交易干扰效应假设等三方面对大连黄大豆1号期货市场涨跌停板制度进行实证研究,经验上发现:①对停板合约而言,波动性不像非停板合约那样快速回到正常水平,即存在波动性溢出效应;②停板合约价格连续性更可能发生,即存在延迟价格发现效应;③在停板日随后的交易日,停板合约明显放量,换手率大幅增加,而非停板合约换手率呈现下降趋势,即存在交易干扰效应。涨跌停板似乎妨碍了期货有效价格的发现,在减少期价波动性以及阻止过度投机行为等方面的作用值得怀疑。从而,笔者认为,应相应地扩大涨跌停板幅度(例如,提高到5%水平),减少碰板的次数,以提高整个市场运行的效率。     

Market linkages between the U.S. and Japan: an application to the fisheries industry

Recent trends in globalization of Pacific Basin commodity markets raises important questions concerning the nature of market integration and price linkages. This paper examines this issue by testing for price linkages between the United States and Japan for two species whose exports from the U.S. to Japan have risen considerably over the past decade. Empirical results indicate segmentation of price linkages for sablefish but probable price linkages for some thornyhead markets. Findings suggest that markets for these species may be less sensitive to price changes in Japan than would be expected based on commodity flows.     

Modelling the volatility of commodities prices using a stochastic volatility model with random level shifts

We use the approach of Qu and Perron (Econom J 16(3):309–339, 2013) for the modeling and inference of volatility of a set of commodity prices in the presence of random level shifts of unknown timing, magnitude and frequency. Our approach contributes to the study of commodities in several aspects. First, we test for the presence of a genuine long-memory process in the volatility of commodities. Second, we determine that the random level shifts are certainly the main source of variation in the commodity price volatility. Finally, we estimate the volatility and its components as latent variables, thereby making it possible to evaluate their level of correlation with macroeconomic variables in small open economies such as Latin-American countries where the dependence on commodity price volatility is high. We use six commodity series: agriculture, livestock, gold, oil, industrial metals and a general commodity index. All series cover the period from January 1983 until December 2013 in daily frequency. The results show that although the occurrence of a level shift is rare, (about once every 1.5 or 1.8 years), this component clearly contributes most to the variation in the volatility. Furthermore, isolating the level shift component from the overall volatility indicates a strong relationship of this component with a set of business cycle indicators of several Latin American countries.