A behavioral cobweb-like commodity market model with heterogeneous speculators

According to empirical studies, speculators place significant orders in commodity markets and may cause bubbles and crashes. This paper develops a cobweb-like commodity market model that takes into account the behavior of technical and fundamental speculators. We show that interactions between consumers, producers and heterogeneous speculators may produce price dynamics which mimics the cyclical price motion of actual commodity markets, i.e., irregular switches between bullish and bearish price developments. Moreover, we find that the impact of speculators on price dynamics is non-trivial: depending on the market structure, speculative transactions may either be beneficial or harmful for market stability.     

Spillover Dynamics of Central Bank Interventions

Abstract. Central banks frequently intervene in foreign exchange markets to reduce volatility or to correct misalignments. Such operations may be successful if they drive away destabilizing speculators. However, the speculators do not simply vanish but may reappear on other foreign exchange markets. Using a model in which traders are able to switch between foreign exchange markets, we demonstrate that while a central bank indeed has several means at hand to stabilize a specific market, the variability of the other markets depends on how the interventions are implemented.     

The impact of news,oil prices,and global market developments on Russian financial markets1

This paper analyses the impact of news, oil prices, and international financial market developments on daily returns on Russian bond and stock markets. First, regarding returns, energy news affects returns, while news from the war in Chechnya is not significant. Market volatility does not appear to be sensitive to either type of news. Second, a significant effect of the growth in oil prices on Russian stock returns is detected. Third, the international influence on Russian financial markets depends upon the degree of financial liberalization. The higher the degree of financial liberalization, the stronger is the impact of US stock returns on Russian financial markets. In addition, banking reform and interest rate liberalization efforts seem to dictate the globalization of Russian stock markets, while it is the progress in liberalizing securities markets and non‐bank financial institutions that matters more for the globalization of Russian bond markets.     

Stochastic and structural fiscal policy in a monetary stationary economy

In the framework of a monetary asset pricing model which is simple enough to generate closed form formulae for equilibrium price functions the interactions between output, fiscal policy, and asset markets is investigated. With money yielding liquidity services in the exchange process real stock prices are negatively correlated with anticipated (stochastic) fiscal policy changes, while the impact of unanticipated (structural) fiscal policy on the stock market depends qualitatively on the ‘business cycle’ of the economy. It is shown that the monetary character of the economy, more precisely the role of money in the exchange process, is critical for the relationship between fiscal policy and real share prices. Moreover, while contingent fiscal policy measures may be successful in stabilizing the real interest rate on money they are incapable of achieving a stable term structure of the real rate on stocks. In contrast, uncontingently higher public expenditures generally promote the volatility of the real rates on financial assets.     

Non-linear causality between the stock and real estate markets of Western European countries: Evidence from rank tests

Using the non-parametric rank tests proposed by Breitung (2001), we set out in this study to determine whether any non-linear long-run equilibrium relationship exists between the stock and real estate markets of Western European countries. We go on to adopt the threshold error-correction model (TECM) to determine whether a similar relationship is discernible possibly non-linear functions of the log-price of these two markets. The findings clearly point to the existence of long-run unidirectional and bidirectional causality between the real estate market and the stock market in regions both above and below the threshold level. Finally, we find the existence of both wealth and credit price effects in the real estate markets and stock markets of Western European countries, which thereby offer financial institutions and individual investors in their construction of long-term investment portfolios within these two asset markets.     

Loss aversion and market crashes

This study proposes a rational expectation equilibrium model of stock market crashes with information asymmetry and loss averse speculators. We obtain a state-dependent linear optimal trading strategy, which makes the equilibrium price tractable. The model predicts nonlinear market depth and the result that small shocks to fundamentals (e.g., supply or informational shocks) can cause abrupt price movements. We demonstrate that short-sale constraints intensify asset price collapses relative to upward movements. The model also generates contagion between uncorrelated assets. These results are consistent with the main puzzling features observed during market crashes, namely abrupt and asymmetric price movements that are not driven by major news events but coupled with a spillover effect between unrelated markets.     

Global financial crisis as a phenomenon of stock market overshooting

Inspired by Dornbusch’s model of exchange rate overshooting we develop a theory of stock market behaviour and its impact on the real economy. The idea is that stock market prices overshoot and undershoot their long-run equilibrium values which are determined by the development in the real economy. The overshooting is triggered primarily by a loose monetary policy. With our model we explain the genesis of the global financial crisis (GFC) 2008/2009 primarily as the result of a loose monetary policy in the USA. Following the overshooting and crash in the stock market the real economy dropped into a recession. After modelling the interaction of three markets with different speed of adjustment—money, stocks and goods—for a closed economy we expand it to an open economy and lastly study the spillovers of a financial market crisis between countries (from a large to a small country) by introducing the transmission channels of external trade or cross-border financial transactions. A long-lasting monetary easing as exhibiting by the Fed and the ECB since 2007 and 2008, respectively could—according to our model—generate another boom-bust cycle.     

ASIAN FINANCIAL LINKAGE: MACRO‐FINANCE DISSONANCE

How are Asian financial markets interlinked and how are they linked to markets in developed countries? What is the main driver of fluctuations in Asian financial markets as well as real economic activity? To answer these questions, we estimate the spillover index proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz and gauge the degree of interaction in both financial markets and real economic activity among Asian economies. We first show that the degree of the international spillover in stock markets is uniform, irrespective of the groups of countries concerned, such as the G3 and ASEAN4. This suggests the importance of global common shocks in stock markets. We then discuss the macro‐finance dissonance. In stock and bond markets, the United States has been the main driver of fluctuations. However, China has emerged as an important source of fluctuations in real economic activity.     

Financial systems and economic growth in South Africa: a dynamic complementarity test

This study examines the relationship between banks, stock markets and economic growth in South Africa. The study attempts to answer one critical question: are stock markets and banks complementary to one another in the process of enhancing economic growth? The complementarity between the stock markets and banks is examined by including a set of interactive terms in a standard growth model, alongside bank development and stock market development proxies. In order to test the robustness of the results, three proxies of stock market development have been used, namely stock market capitalization, stock market traded value and stock market turnover – against the ratio of bank credit to the private sector, a proxy for bank-based financial development. The economic growth is, however, proxied by real GDP per capita. Using the ARDL-Bounds testing procedure, the study finds that the complementarity between stock market development and bank-based financial development is weak and sensitive to the proxy used to measure stock market development.     

Speculative and hedging interaction model in oil and U.S. dollar markets with financial transaction taxes

Our article develops a game theory model of interaction between speculative and hedging behaviors in the oil and US dollar markets, in the presence of a severe taxation on speculative financial transactions. From this microeconomic analysis, we derive a regulatory policy. This policy has two consequences at the macro level: on one hand, it has a certain stabilizing effects on oil and US dollar markets, limiting the number of speculative transactions and their size; on the other hand, it induces the speculators to find agreements with real economic agents, which are profitable for both parts. Moreover, we propose that the tax is mostly re-directed to support the real economy. So, the aim of this paper appears twofold: by using Game Theory, we suggest to a pair of economic agents a way to gain in a market, also in presence of a hard taxation on the financial transactions, proposing, at the same time, to normative authority, a method to limit the instability of oil and U.S. Dollar markets and to help real economy. Our idea, at the micro-economic level, is to exploit the hedging actions to obtain a profit, limiting, at the same time, at a macro-level, the speculative attacks on oil and U.S. Dollar markets. These goals are reached by the introduction of well designed financial transactions tax. In particular, we focus on a real economic subject (Multinational Air) and on an investment bank (Bank). The solutions collectively efficient are determined, at a micro-level, by certain agreements between the two economic subjects. Specifically, after an agreement which allows to obtain the maximum collective profit of the interaction, we propose and analyze four different possible fair divisions of this gain, by adopting the Kalai–Smorodinsky method.     

The relationship between South Asian stock returns and macroeconomic variables

This article investigates whether economic variables have explanatory power for share returns in South Asian stock markets. In particular, using data for four South Asian emerging stock markets over the period 1998–2012, the article examines the influence of a selection of local, regional and global economic variables in explaining equity returns; most previous studies that have examined this issue have tended to focus on only local and/or global factors. Important factors are identified by distilling the macroeconomic variables into principal components. Economic activities, real interest rates, real exchange rates and the trade balance represent local factors. Regional factors are represented by interregional trade and regional economic activity while global factors are represented by world financial asset returns and world economic activity. The vector autoregression results suggest that the South Asian markets examined are not efficient. Both local and regional factors can directly and indirectly explain Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Sri Lankan stock returns while the lagged returns of the Pakistani stock market and world economic activity can explain Indian stock returns.     

A core–periphery framework in stock markets of the euro zone

The introduction of the euro was expected to have an effect not only on real convergence of economies but also on stock markets. This research compares the dynamics and synchronization of stock market regimes in European markets before and after the euro launch. Countries of the euro zone are found to have different dynamics with regard to switching between bull and bear markets, but the differences become less pronounced after the introduction of the single currency, increasing the overall level of stock market synchronization. Nevertheless, Austria and Portugal reduced the level of regime synchronization with other stock markets. The results delineate a framework of core–periphery stock markets, i.e., a large group of stock markets that share the same market regime, with some others on the periphery characterized by distinctive behavior.     

Responses of international stock markets to oil price surges: a regime-switching perspective

We propose an enhanced regime-switching model to investigate the relationships between oil price surges and stock market cycles in five oil-dependent countries. Our model accounts for the joint effects of the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent oil markets and simultaneously captures asymmetry, volatility persistence and regime shifts contained in the underlying financial data. We find that stock market returns strongly exhibit a regime-switching behaviour, but they react differently to the increases in the price of oil. More precisely, the conditional volatility of studied stock markets during the bear market phases is found to be less affected by oil price surges than during the bull market phases. Whether the effects of oil shocks are positive or negative depends greatly on the degree of reliance on imported oil, the share of the cost of oil in the national income and the degree of improvement in energy efficiency of a given country. Finally, the relatively opposite effects of the WTI and Brent oil markets suggest the potential of substitution between them as well as the necessity of a diversification strategy of oil supply sources.     

Financialization of food. Modelling the time-varying relation between agricultural prices and stock market dynamics

This article studies the correlation of agricultural prices with stock market dynamics. We discuss the possible role of financial and macroeconomic factors in driving this time-varying relation, with the aim of understanding what caused positive correlation between agricultural commodities and stocks in recent years. While previous works on commodity-equity correlation have focused on broad commodity indices, we study 16 agricultural prices, in order to assess patterns that are specific to agricultural commodities but also differences across markets. We show that an explanation based on a combination of financialization and financial crisis is consistent with the empirical evidence in most markets, while global demand factors don’t appear to play a significant role. The correlation between agricultural prices and stock market returns tends to increase during periods of financial turmoil. The impact of financial turmoil on the correlation gets stronger as the share of financial investors in agricultural derivatives markets rises. Our findings suggest that the influence of financial shocks on agricultural prices should decrease as global financial tensions settle down but also that, as long as agricultural markets are ‘financialized’, it might rise again when it is less needed, i.e. in the presence of new financial turmoil.     

Credit rationing in a disequilibrium macroeconomic model

This paper develops a four-market disequilibrium macroeconomic model. The model includes the labor, output, bond, and money markets. A number of papers have considered the interactions between the labor and output markets. Fewer papers have considered the financial sectors. This paper is an exploration into the role of financial market disequilibrium (e.g., credit rationing) within a disequilibrium macroeconomic model.     

Dynamic Correlation Analysis of Asian Stock Markets

This paper examines the stock market linkages within the Asia-Pacific region and between Asian markets and the U.S. market over the period of January 2000 to June 2010, employing the dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model. Our results show that there exist very high correlations among the stock markets during the 2008 financial crisis. Therefore, consistent with the finding in literature, there are no diversification benefits during the financial crisis. However, our results show that there are still substantial opportunities for global investors to improve the risk-return performance between China and other markets during the sample period. In addition, we find evidence that the U.S. market significantly affects the stock markets in the Asia-Pacific region. Using T-GARCH model, there is a strong evidence of an asymmetric effect on conditional variance except stock markets in China and Malaysia.     

Bull or bear markets: A wavelet dynamic correlation perspective

In this paper, we contribute to the literature on the international stock market co-movements and contagion, especially during the recent subprime crisis, by researching the interconnections between international stock markets in time-frequency domain.Our innovative approach consists on carrying out a wavelet decomposition of return time series before investigating the correlation dynamics across stock markets during the recent financial crisis. It thus enables us to show how the contagion dynamics between international stock market returns are changing across time scales corresponding to investors with heterogeneous time horizons. Moreover, our results reveal that the contagion dynamics depends on the bull or bear periods of stock markets, on stock markets maturity, and on regional aspects. Therefore, all these finding should be considered from an international portfolio diversification perspective.     

Markets contagion during financial crisis: A regime-switching approach

Within a Markov regime-switching VAR framework, we investigate the contagion effects among the stock market, real estate market, credit default market, and energy market covering the most recent financial crisis period when markets experience regime shifts. The results demonstrate that the watershed of regimes occurs around the start of the subprime crisis in 2007, after which the “risky” regime dominates the evolution of market chaos. During the financial crisis, excluding their own shocks, stock market shock and oil price shock are the main driving forces behind the credit default market and stock market variations, respectively. The energy market also appears to be more responsive to the stock market movements than the shocks originating from housing and credit markets. However, the impacts from the credit default market on the real estate market are not significant as expected.     

中国可转债市场与股票市场的动态关系研究——基于DCC-MGARCH模型的分析

近年来,DCC-MGARCH模型已经被成熟地运用到对一些金融市场间关系的研究中,运用DCC-MGARCH模型对可转债市场与股票市场间的动态相关系数进行研究,采用全局综合与局部分析的方法,刻画上述两金融市场间相关系数的动态时变特征,结果表明：采用DCC-MGARCH模型对可转债市场与股票市场间关系的研究是有效且可行的。     

Predicting long-run risk factors of stock returns: Evidence from Australia

This study utilises the stock market data provided by the Australian Equity Database to analyse the long-run relationship between Australian stock returns and key macroeconomic variables over the period 1926–2017. To measure the diverse risk factors in the stock market, we examine the possible determinants in four main categories: real, financial, domestic and international. Our results reveal that historical stock returns are strongly connected to financial and international factors as compared to real and domestic factors. Both the 1973–1974 OPEC Oil Price Crisis and 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis had dampening effects on stock returns. There is a positive association between the US and Australian stock markets in the long-run. These findings on stock market dynamics and their linkages with domestic and international macroeconomic policy changes in the long-run have important implications for traders and practitioners.