Paper money but a gold debt: Italy on the gold standard

For most of the classical gold standard era, Italy was not formally committed to gold, instead the lira “shadowed” gold. The remarkable stability of the lira exchange rate raises the question of why Italy did not move to official convertibility when it could have gained gold standard benefits at a seemingly low cost. The answer to this puzzle lies in the management of the Italy’s large foreign debt. Although denominated in lire, holders of the debt had the privilege of converting their coupons into gold at the official exchange rate in Paris. This arrangement offered the government an opportunity to temporarily exploit domestic bondholders who found it difficult to circumvent the barriers to arbitrage. In times of fiscal problems, the government gained some seignorage while the lira was allowed a limited depreciation. Shadowing the official gold rate, lost some of the possible benefits of convertibility but gave the government fiscal flexibility.     

黄金期货中的隐含远期人民币汇率及其运用研究

中国黄金市场已高度市场化与国际化,在按人民币即期汇率调整后,境内外黄金市场现货价格之间已没有明显的升贴水。基于黄金期货之间的隐含远期汇率与离岸人民币NDF市场远期汇率到期前的不一致性与临近到期日的一致性,运用黄金期货构建替代性的远期外汇头寸,为投资者提供了现行管制环境下实现外汇投资、跨市场套利以及对真实外汇敞口风险进行套期保值的新渠道。     

Exchange Rate Risk and Interest Rate: A Case Study for Turkey

This paper examines the effect of exchange rate risk on interest rates within the uncovered interest rate parity condition for Turkey. When the interest rate is measured with the Treasury auction interest rate and the exchange rate risk is measured with the conditional variance of the exchange rate, then we found that there is a positive relation between the exchange rate risk and interest rate with the data from December 1986 to January 2001.     

International bimetallism and silver absorption in Singapore, 1840–73

This study reveals the mechanism underlying the silver trade in Singapore during the third quarter of the nineteenth century by analysing banking business and bullion arbitrage. After 1849, the California Gold Rush induced gold depreciation and silver appreciation in Singapore's bullion market, and arbitrage profits for silver imports from Britain emerged. At the same time, the expansion of banking business by eastern exchange banks enhanced the connectivity of Singapore's exchange market with London, and enabled bullion arbitrage between the two distant cities. As a result, there was an influx of silver from Britain. In addition, Dutch silver, which was exported to Java by the Netherlands after 1854, flowed into Singapore due to the unfavourable exchange policy of the Dutch government.     

Information asymmetry and the speed of adjustment: debasements in the mid‐sixteenth century

This article examines the impact of information asymmetry on the movement of London–Antwerp exchange rates against the backdrop of the Great Debasement of 1544–51. The case of the revaluation of gold coins in the Habsburg Netherlands in 1539, about which the sovereign and the public possessed similar information, is used as the benchmark to judge how far the speed of adjustment was affected by information asymmetry. This article is also part of the recent literature that estimates the degree of financial market integration in late medieval and early modern Europe. In the framework of the threshold autoregressive model, the speed of adjustment and the transaction costs associated with arbitrage are estimated, and the results are judged using the speed of communication as a benchmark since the flow of information played a critical role in financial arbitrage. The results reveal that the sixteenth‐century London–Antwerp exchange markets were already as integrated as that during the late nineteenth century, but information asymmetry severely disturbed the effectiveness of exchange arbitrage.     

业绩约束的有限套利:模型拓展与实证检验

通过引入套利者基于风险厌恶的资产配置决策．本文对Shleifer和Vishny（1997）的业绩约束的有限套利（PBA）模型作了扩展。本文的理论模型表明业绩约束的套利者的套利能力所受到的限制远超过SV模型的推断。业绩约束的有限套利从两个角度对套利者的套利能力做了限制：业绩不佳,既使得最终投资者减少对套利者的投资资金。也导致套利者预留更多的现金来满足流动性需求,从而套利者可运用到风险资产上的套利资源减少。利用中国开放式基金数据．本文对这个拓展模型做了实证检验。结果显示。套利者在实际投资中存在着基于风险厌恶的资产配置决策,业绩约束的套利者的套利能力的限制是现实存在的。     

基于协整方法的统计套利策略的实证分析

统计套利技术于上世纪八十年代被提出并广泛应用于实践。其在美国、欧洲、日本等成熟市场已成为主流，被大量对冲基金和投资机构采用，管理着巨额的资产，对股权及衍生品市场交易有很大影响。统计套利技术经过实践证明，能够帮助人们获取可观的收益。本文首先对统计套利的定义和策略进行了介绍，接着采用协整方法、选取了我国融资融券标的的90只股票，对成对交易的统计套利策略的表现进行了实证分析，实证结果表明该技术可以较好地适用于中国市场，为做空机制在中国市场推出后金融机构和投资者们的投资行为提出一些参考和建议。     

The pitfalls of estimating transactions costs from price data: Evidence from trans-Atlantic gold-point arbitrage, 1886-1905

This paper argues that bilateral spatial price models do not estimate bilateral transactions costs when trade with third cities is important. The paper examines trans-Atlantic gold arbitrage during the gold standard era by assembling a database indicating when trans-Atlantic gold shipments occurred. It shows that two-way gold shipments between New York and London frequently occurred prior to 1901. However, in 1901 gold shipments to London ceased and were replaced by triangular arbitrage shipments through Paris. Consequently, New York and London gold price data cannot be used to estimate New York-London transactions costs after 1901, as no trade took place.     

Nonlinear Aspects of Goods-Market Arbitrage and Adjustment: Heckscher''s Commodity Points Revisited

We propose that analysis of purchasing power parity (PPP) and the law of one price should explicitly take into account the possibility of “commodity points”—thresholds delineating a region of no central tendency among relative prices, possibly due to lack of perfect arbitrage in the presence of transaction costs and uncertainty. More than 80 years ago, Heckscher stressed the importance of such incomplete arbitrage in the empirical application of PPP. We devise an econometric method to identify commodity points. Price adjustment is treated as a nonlinear process, and a threshold autoregression offers a parsimonious specification within which both thresholds and adjustment speeds are estimated by maximum likelihood methods. Our model performs well using post-1980 data, and yields parameter estimates that appear quite reasonable: adjustment outside the thresholds might imply half-lives of price deviations measured in months rather than years, and the thresholds correspond to popular rough estimates as to the order of magnitude of actual transport costs. The estimated commodity points appear to be positively related to objective measures of market segmentation, notably nominal exchange rate volatility.J. Japan Int. Econ.December 1997,11(4), pp. 441–479. Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3880; and Department of Economics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208-2600.     

Forward exchange,short term capital flows and monetary policy: A comment

Summary In this comment it is argued that the theoretical explanation of Coulbois and Prissert of the functioning of the forward exchange market (the cambist theory) is nothing but a simplified version of the interest parity theory, because in their theory the horizontal arbitrage function implicitly plays a dominant role.Further some critical remarks are made concerning the role of non-bank arbitrages and the influence of interest arbitrage on the spot rate, on the size of the international short-term capital movements and on the domestic money supply.They want to thank Mr. William Schep for his helpful comments with regard to the translation into English of the original text.     

国际黄金、白银价格变动的实证分析

通过对黄金和白银价格的线性比例分析和黄金与白银价格变动率的相关性分析,得出黄金与白银的价格之间具有线性相关性,且黄金价格和白银价格在变动趋势上具有一致性。分析国际黄金、白银价格变动的数理关系,不仅可以充实目前贵金属领域学术研究匮乏的基础,而且可以为白银产业链条企业的保值和套利提供决策参考。     

基于套利模型的我国可转债市场分析

可转债作为一种中间性投融资工具,有利于解决我国资本市场存在的一些问题,如股权融资比例过高、投资品种单一等。我国的可转债市场存在着规模小、流动性差等一系列问题,因而不适合短期套利行为。文章认为,解决这一个问题可以从适当延长可转债的期限、放宽市场利率以及扩展交易主体等几个方面入手。     

Exchange Rate Forecasting: Results from a Threshold Autoregressive Model

Structural models of exchange rate determination rarely forecast the exchange rate more accurately than a naive random walk model. Recent innovations in exchange rate modeling indicate that changes in the exchange rate may follow a self-exciting threshold autoregressive model (SETAR). We estimate a SETAR model for various monthly US dollar exchange rates and generate forecasts for the estimated models. We find: (1) nonlinearities in the data not uncovered by the standard nonlinearity tests and (2) that the SETAR model produces better forecasts than the naive random walk model.     

THE ROLE OF COMMODITY PRICES IN MACROECONOMIC POLICY IN SOUTH AFRICA

This paper examines whether commodity prices can be used as signal for informing macroeconomic policy in South Africa using the new approach for testing Granger causality developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995 ). Evidence of causality from average gold price to interest rate, money, exchange rate and the consumer price index was observed. Again, evidence of causality was observed from metals price index to interest rate, money and exchange rate. The results suggest there is merit in using South Africa's average gold price and the metals price index of the International Monetary Fund as informational variables in setting monetary policy.     

Keynes' monetary theory and bank reserves in Britain

Conclusions The key institutional peculiarity of Britain that caused the economics of Keynes is that bank reserves on all types of deposits were traditionally the same. This meant that decisions of savers and speculators to increase holdings of Savings-deposits (which are the alternative to securities) did not increase bank lending ability. The key mechanism of flexible interest rates was disabled, and arbitrage between different types of investments caused the fixing of the bank rate and the deposit rate to be transmitted to all short-term rates, and with inelastic expectations, to long rates. Higher interest rates increase the quantity of the medium of exchange in circulation. The quantity of the medium of exchange is endogenous in Keynes' system. Such interest-rate raising events as decreased savings, an increase in the marginal efficiency of capital, and deficit financing all increase the quantity of the medium of exchange in circulation. The monetarist distinction between deficit financing by money creation and debt is not meaningful in Britain where all deficit financing expands the money supply.     

东亚金融一体化程度研究

本文通过使用汇率波动率、人均消费增长率的相关度、未抛补的利率平价偏差、双边贸易强度、利率相关度这五个指标来反映中国、日本、韩国以及中国香港、中国台湾任意两个经济体之间金融一体化的程度,并采用主成分分析的方法计算出了任意两个经济体之间金融一体化程度的大小。最后,本文依照分析结果结合目前东亚金融合作现状、东亚经济体面临的国际国内经济环境提出了促进东亚金融一体化的政策建议。     

A monetary plethora and what to do with it: the Bank of Portugal during the Second World War and the postwar period (1931–60)

Until the Second World War the Bank of Portugal (BoP) was a long way from possessing the features normally associated with a central bank. It was still a commercial bank, albeit one that had acquired some central bank functions. The war period was decisive in removing this ambiguity. The change was caused mostly by an unusually large influx of international means of payment (gold and foreign exchange) as a consequence of Portugal's neutrality during the war. However, all of this happened during a very troubled period for the BoP, thanks to the collapse of the gold‐exchange standard. The BoP adapted quickly to the new environment of discretion, government interference, and nationalism, although in a relatively original way: it followed the trend but at the same time retained certain features of a central bank still committed to gold standard principles. The two essential objectives of the BoP were to keep the value of the Portuguese currency stable and to keep interest rates low in order to encourage economic growth. The bank was successful on both counts during the war and the postwar period using a series of non‐conventional instruments.     

Addressing International Empirical Puzzles: the Liquidity of Bonds

Models that assume bonds denominated in different currencies are perfect substitutes can not explain certain empirical puzzles: the exchange rate volatility puzzle is that these models can not explain the observed volatility in real and nominal exchange rates; the Backus-Smith puzzle is that these models can not explain the observed low correlation between real exchange rates and the ratio of home to foreign consumption; the Backus-Kehoe-Kydland puzzle is that these models can not explain the observed low correlation between home and foreign consumption; and finally, the uncovered interest parity puzzle is that these models can not explain the observed deviations from that parity. These long standing puzzles make the models harder to defend. In this paper, we present a symmetric two country portfolio balance model in which home and foreign bonds are imperfect substitutes for money in each country’s transactions technology; this of course makes home and foreign bonds imperfect substitutes for each other. Our calibrated model is capable of addressing the Backus-Smith puzzle and the Backus-Kehoe-Kydland puzzle. It does not fully resolve the exchange rate volatility puzzle, but it makes some headway. And finally it generates deviations from uncovered interest parity, though by some estimates these deviations are not large enough to be consistent with the data.     

NO‐ARBITRAGE ONE‐FACTOR MODELS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN TERM STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES

Short‐term interest rate processes determine the term structure of interest rates in an arbitrage‐free market and are central to the valuation of interest rate derivatives. We obtain parameter estimates and compare the empirical fit of alternative one‐factor continuous‐time processes for the South African short‐term interest rate (and hence of arbitrage‐free term structure models) using Gaussian estimation methods. We find support only for diffusions where the interest rate volatility is moderately sensitive to the level of the interest rate. Other common models with restrictions that either preclude this effect, or restrict it to be too high, do not fit the data. Differences in the specification of the drift function have no evident effect on model performance.     

Two-Part Pricing with Costly Arbitrage

This paper considers the optimal two-part pricing strategy of a monopolist whose customers collude when they purchase the firm's product. In contrast to the sentiment in the existing price discrimination literature, I find that a monopolist's profit can actually increase when consumers share its good. When transaction costs for collusion are zero the firm can extract the full consumer surplus through two-part prices. When transaction costs are positive or there are a substantial number of consumers without access to resale, the firm may be hurt by arbitrage.