The Limits of Arbitrage

Textbook arbitrage in financial markets requires no capital and entails no risk. In reality, almost all arbitrage requires capital, and is typically risky. Moreover, professional arbitrage is conducted by a relatively small number of highly specialized investors using other people's capital. Such professional arbitrage has a number of interesting implications for security pricing, including the possibility that arbitrage becomes ineffective in extreme circumstances, when prices diverge far from fundamental values. The model also suggests where anomalies in financial markets are likely to appear, and why arbitrage fails to eliminate them.     

International tax arbitrage,financial parity conditions and preferential capital gains taxation

Using a finite-horizon general equilibrium model with uncertainty and money, we characterize situations where tax arbitrage opportunities may arise for international portfolio investors in an economy with heterogeneous capital income taxation when interest income and capital gains/losses are taxed differentially for some agents. We derive tax-modified uncovered interest parity conditions, Fisher conditions and forward prices similar to the no-tax ones, but augmented by tax-induced ‘risk-premium’ terms; covered interest parity and Fisher conditions remain unaffected by the introduction of capital income taxes as we bound tax-based arbitrage without restricting arbitrage per se.     

商业银行监管资本套利的均衡分析

监管资本套利,产生于巴塞尔协议资本监管框架的缺陷,是一种利用资本监管制度之间的差异性以及制度内部的不协调性,运用某种手段在不改变实际风险水平的情况下提高资本充足率水平的行为。通过对以下问题的探讨:商业银行监管资本套利所获得的收益在银行与资金需求方之间的配置比例;针对某种资产的监管资本套利,对其他资产供求双方所产生的隐性套利收益的表现形式及其归属程度;由商业银行异质性所导致的监管套利顾客现象;信息不对称情况下,市场对于套利者与非套利者的逆向选择等等,认为银行监管部门应适当引导符合政策意图的套利行为,提高政策引导调控能力。     

The Dynamics of Financially Constrained Arbitrage

We develop a model in which financially constrained arbitrageurs exploit price discrepancies across segmented markets. We show that the dynamics of arbitrage capital are self‐correcting: following a shock that depletes capital, returns increase, which allows capital to be gradually replenished. Spreads increase more for trades with volatile fundamentals or more time to convergence. Arbitrageurs cut their positions more in those trades, except when volatility concerns the hedgeable component. Financial constraints yield a positive cross‐sectional relationship between spreads/returns and betas with respect to arbitrage capital. Diversification of arbitrageurs across markets induces contagion, but generally lowers arbitrageurs' risk and price volatility.     

Cross-country effects of regulatory capital arbitrage

One reason for the recent asset price bubbles in many developed countries could be regulatory capital arbitrage. Regulatory and legal changes can help traditional banks to move their assets off their balance sheets into the lightly regulated shadows and thus enable regulatory arbitrage through the securitized sector. This paper adopts a global vector autoregression (GVAR) methodology to assess the effects of regulatory capital arbitrage on equity prices, house prices and economic activity across 11 OECD countries/regions. A counterfactual experiment disentangles the effects of regulatory arbitrage following a change in the net capital rule for investment banks in April 2004 and the adoption of the Basel II Accord in June 2004. The results provide evidence for the existence of an international finance multiplier, with about half of the countries overshooting U.S. impulse responses. The counterfactual shows that regulatory arbitrage via the U.S. securitized sector may enhance the cross-country reallocation of capital from housing markets towards equity markets.     

The Destination of Outward FDI and the Performance of South Korean Multinationals

This paper examines how the destination of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) affects South Korean multinational parent firms. We categorize host countries into those that are developed and those that are less developed. We find that destination matters for employment and capital intensity. FDI into less developed countries is negatively associated with a firm's employment and positively associated with its capital intensity. However, FDI into developed countries does not seem to matter: the parent firm's activities do not change significantly after FDI has been made. These results may indicate that Korean FDI into less developed countries is a relocation of production lines to overseas affiliates and FDI into developed countries is done to extend markets.     

跨境资金流入与外汇监管机制研究——聊城涉外企业案例

我国作为新兴市场经济体正面临着资本流入激增的压力,出现了异常和持续的跨境资金通过预收货款渠道长驱直入,实现套利目的的新特点。本文以山东省聊城市涉外企业预收货款套利为例,分析跨境资金流入的情形、趋势、影响,并对进一步抑制异常跨境资金套利的监管机制提出合理化建议,以弱化其对经济金融发展的不利影响。     

贷款证券化、监管资本套利与资本监管改进

巴塞尔协议的资本充足率指标可以反映银行部门吸收风险损失的能力,但是无法监测和控制银行体系外的贷款总额和累积的信用风险。20世纪70年代的贷款证券化创新导致银行进行监管资本套利,并使得资本充足率监管趋于失效。本文基于贷款证券化下银行贷款余额与社会贷款余额的差异,分析银行监管资本套利的微观机制并提出改进资本监管的建议。     

International Capital Structure Equilibrium

This paper develops a theory of capital structure in an international setting with corporate and personal taxes. We generalize the Miller analysis to an international equilibrium characterized by differential international taxation and inflation in otherwise perfect international capital markets. Our analysis highlights the key role that corporate tax arbitrage plays in generating an international capital structure equilibrium, and we set forth a number of mechanisms for tax arbitrage transactions. We close the paper by outlining some implications of our analysis for national differences in capital structure, the International Fisher Effect, and international tax effects on yield differentials.     

我国人力资本水平与FDI相互关系的实证研究

本文构建了一个人力资本模型，并刊用该模型计算了中国1978—2004年的人力资本指数。在此基础上，本文对中国1978-2004年的人力资本和FDI的关系进行了实证分析。结果表明，中国人力资本与FDI存在稳定的关系，人力资本的积累对于中国吸收FDI具有重要的作用，但FDI并没有有效地促进中国的人力资本积累。     

Investment,leverage and political risk: Evidence from project-level FDI

Does capital structure influence firms' FDI capital expenditure decisions into countries with varying degrees of political risk? We explore this question using a novel dataset that matches 10,000 unique outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) projects with 1135 distinct U.S. firms over the period 2003–2014. We find that capital expenditures allocated to FDI projects are significantly lower for highly leveraged firms, in particular for firms with low growth opportunities. Firms also commit lower capital amounts to investments located in countries characterized by higher political risk. Furthermore, leverage and political risk interact with one another in determining the financial commitment of the FDI, with leverage exerting a significantly stronger negative effect on capital expenditures in countries where political risk is elevated. Our findings are consistent with the monitoring role of debt in curbing exposure to political risk in multinational firms' foreign operations, and corroborate the disciplinary role of leverage on firms' investment decisions.     

Short Selling and Index Arbitrage Profitability: Evidence from the SGX MSCI and TAIFEX Taiwan Index Futures Markets

There are numerous impediments to market efficiency and index arbitrage in real capital markets, including the uptick rule on short selling, execution risk, market impact costs, regulatory barriers, and capital constraints. Adopting and relaxing the uptick restriction in the Taiwan stock market facilitated a study on whether adjustments in this restriction influence the efficiency and arbitrage of the Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX) and the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) index futures markets. This study examines the above issues using five-minute intraday transaction data and performs an ex post test of arbitrage, ex ante test of arbitrage, and regression analysis. Empirical results indicate that relaxing the uptick rule should improve market efficiency and facilitate long arbitrage, subsequently accelerating the adjustment to no-arbitrage bounds and helping to decrease ex post and ex ante mispricing and underpricing following the relaxation.     

Trading and arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets

Cryptocurrency markets exhibit periods of large, recurrent arbitrage opportunities across exchanges. These price deviations are much larger across than within countries, and smaller between cryptocurrencies, highlighting the importance of capital controls for the movement of arbitrage capital. Price deviations across countries co-move and open up in times of large bitcoin appreciation. Countries with higher bitcoin premia over the US bitcoin price see widening arbitrage deviations when bitcoin appreciates. Finally, we decompose signed volume on each exchange into a common and an idiosyncratic component. The common component explains 80% of bitcoin returns. The idiosyncratic components help explain arbitrage spreads between exchanges.     

Jai Alai arbitrage strategies

This paper presents arbitrage and risk arbitrage betting strategies for Team Jai Alai. This game is the setting for the analysis and most results generalize to other sports betting situations and some financial market applications. The arbitrage conditions are utility free while the risk arbitrage wagers are constructed according to the Kelly criterion/capital growth theory that maximizes asymptotically long-run wealth almost surely.     

Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth in Malaysia: Interactions with Human Capital and Financial Deepening

This paper explores the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in economic growth in Malaysia, appropriately controlling for other proximate drivers of economic growth: domestic investment, exports, financial markets, and human capital. Domestic capital formation, FDI, human capital, and financial deepening significantly affect economic growth. FDI has a positive and significant effect on economic growth, but its effect is of lesser magnitude than that of domestic investment. Human capital and financial markets interact with FDI and, thus, are important for both short- and long-term growth processes. The results suggest that it is important to encourage domestic as well as foreign investment to put Malaysia back on its precrisis growth path.     

Estimating Relationships Among FDI Inflow,Domestic Capital,and Economic Growth Using the Threshold Error Correction Approach

This paper investigates both long- and short-term relationships among foreign direct investment (FDI), domestic capital, and economic growth in Taiwan using the threshold error-correction approach. The results show a long-term equilibrium relationship among the three variables, which remains stable with asymmetric adjustments. Three short-term relationships are found: (1) promoting growth may stimulate domestic capital accumulation; (2) increasing FDI inflow may stimulate investment from domestic sources rather than crowd out the formation of capital; and (3) FDI inflows directly influence growth through stimulating domestic investment.     

中国的短期国际资本流动——基于月度VAR模型的三重动因解析

本文在已有文献的基础上,选择短期国际资本流动及套利、套汇和套价三类因素共六个变量,采集2002年1月至2011年6月的中国月度数据构建VAR模型,分析三类因素对中国短期国际资本流动的驱动因素影响。结果表明,中国短期国际资本流动在较大程度上由其自身变化解释;在三大因素的可解释部分中,套汇因素的影响最大,且主要表现为预期汇率驱动,套价因素的影响次之,其表现为股价和房价驱动,套利因素的影响极弱。这一结论与中国外汇市场和货币市场的现状密切相关,同时对短期国际资本流入的监测管理和人民币汇率制度改革具有重要的启示意义。     

Does Regulatory Capital Arbitrage, Reputation, or Asymmetric Information Drive Securitization?

Banks can choose to keep loans on balance sheet as private debt or transform them into public debt via asset securitization. Securitization transfers credit and interest rate risk, increases liquidity, augments fee income, and improves capital ratios. Yet many lenders still retain a portion of their loans in portfolio. Do lenders exploit asymmetric information to sell riskier loans into the public markets or retain riskier loans in portfolio? If riskier loans are indeed retained in portfolio, is this motivated by regulatory capital incentives (regulatory capital arbitrage), or a concern for reputation? We examine these questions empirically and find that securitized mortgage loans have experienced lower ex-post defaults than those retained in portfolio, providing evidence consistent with either the capital arbitrage or reputation explanation for securitization.     

Risk and Return in Fixed-Income Arbitrage: Nickels in Front of a Steamroller?

We conduct an analysis of the risk and return characteristicsof a number of widely used fixed-income arbitrage strategies.We find that the strategies requiring more "intellectual capital"to implement tend to produce significant alphas after controllingfor bond and equity market risk factors. These positive alphasremain significant even after taking into account typical hedgefund fees. In contrast with other hedge fund strategies, manyof the fixed-income arbitrage strategies produce positivelyskewed returns. These results suggest that there may be moreeconomic substance to fixed-income arbitrage than simply "pickingup nickels in front of a steamroller."     

Capital Account Openness,International Trade,and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Investigation

New empirical estimates of the effects of capital restrictions on growth support capital account liberalization, especially for developed countries. Capital restrictions reduce the benefits of foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth in developing countries. Estimation results for long-term capital flows demonstrate that countries with higher flows grow faster, challenging the belief that countries must attain a threshold level of development or human capital to benefit from capital inflows. Moreover, findings show that trade with developed countries and FDI inflows are substitutes in developing countries. Overall, the results support capital account liberalization in developed and developing countries.