The effects of uncertainty measures on the price of gold

This paper analyzes the determinants of the price of gold with a special focus on four uncertainty measures (namely, the volatility (VIX), skewness (SKEW), global economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and partisan conflict (PC) indexes). The nonlinear Autoregressive-distributed Lag (ARDL) model is used to investigate the asymmetric effect of uncertainty measures on gold prices. The results show that rising economic policy uncertainty contributes to increases in the price of gold. By contrast, gold prices are less likely to fall when economic policy conditions are improved.     

Fiscal transparency or fiscal illusion? Housing and credit market responses to fiscal monitoring

International Tax and Public Finance - Nongovernmental stakeholders, including taxpayers and investors of government bonds, have an interest in government financial information. Fiscal transparency...     

Earnings guidance and market uncertainty

We study the effect of disclosure on uncertainty by examining how management earnings forecasts affect stock market volatility. Using implied volatilities from exchange-traded options prices, we find that management earnings forecasts increase short-term volatility. This effect is attributable to forecasts that convey bad news, especially when firms release forecasts sporadically rather than on a routine basis. In the longer run, market uncertainty declines after earnings are announced, regardless of whether there is a preceding earnings forecast. This decline is mitigated when the firm issues a forecast that conveys negative news, implying that these forecasts are associated with increased uncertainty.     

The market price of risk of the variance term structure

In this paper I examine the market price of risk of the variance term structure. To this end, the S&P 500 option implied variance term structure is used as a proxy for aggregate variance risk. Principal component analysis shows that time variation in the variance term structure over the 1996–2012 period can be explained mainly by two factors which capture changes in the level and slope. The market price of risk of each factor is estimated in the cross-section of stock returns. The slope of the variance term structure is the most significant factor in the cross-section of stocks returns and carries a negative risk premium. The slope factor has also some predictive ability over long horizon equity returns.     

The price discovery of day trading activities in futures market

Access to information is necessary for market transparency. However, contrary to trading volume and open interest, information related to day trading activities is rarely available. By incorporating unexplored day trading volume in the literature, this paper demonstrates that both the expected open interest and expected day trading volume are consistently and positively correlated with returns, but that one-lagged day trading volume is negatively correlated with futures returns. Meanwhile, both expected and unexpected day trading volume are negatively correlated with volatility, suggesting that arbitrage activities related to unexpected day trading volume may accelerate the movement of futures prices to a new equilibrium. Moreover, open interest provides liquidity but increases volatility. Finally, we strongly suggest that day trading transaction information be released by futures exchanges to achieve greater transparency.     

财险市场价格竞争有效性研究

我国国内财产保险业务自1980年恢复以来虽然取得了很大成绩,但依旧存在较多问题,特别是市场集中度偏高,导致市场竞争长期处于低水平竞争状态。本文根据市场份额将我国财险公司划分为在位者与竞争者两类,应用Stackelberg博弈模型,对在位者与竞争者的保险价格竞争从单时期和多时期两个层次进行分析,得出在财险市场中,单纯的价格竞争是无效的,并建议从产品和服务的创新、投资、成本管理和客户信息搜集与管理四方面协助价格竞争的展开。     

Hedging decisions with price and output uncertainty

We generally show that the introduction of output uncertainty does not affect the hedging position of the firm.     

Optimal fiscal policies and market structures with monopolistic competition

International Tax and Public Finance - This paper develops a unified imperfectly competitive macroeconomic model, and uses it to analyze optimal fiscal policies in the presence of market...     

Energy price uncertainty and the value premium

This paper examines the impact of energy price uncertainty on a range of value anomalies. We demonstrate that the value premium is substantially stronger in periods of heightened energy price uncertainty. Energy price uncertainty exerts an asymmetric effect on the value anomalies, whereby downside energy price uncertainty accentuates the return differences between value and growth stocks compared to upside energy uncertainty. These findings are consistent with the argument that value firms possess a larger amount of inflexible assets than growth firms. Therefore, they struggle more to adjust in periods of elevated energy price uncertainty. We also demonstrate that energy price uncertainty has predictive power on the value premium one-month ahead. Using the Feasible Generalized Least Squares predictive model, energy price uncertainty can help mean-variance investors to obtain a positive annual utility gain across the value anomalies for up to 16.71%.     

Gold price dynamics and the role of uncertainty

This study focuses on the dynamics of the gold price against bonds, stocks and exchange rates based on a disaggregation of the underlying relationships across different frequencies applying a wavelet decomposition. To analyze joint extreme movements (i.e. tail dependence), we adopt a copula approach, which helps us to assess the dependence between the returns of gold and other assets in calm and turmoil market times and therefore the hedge and safe haven functions of gold. We also examine whether gold prices are directly affected by changes in macroeconomic uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty and/or CPI forecasters disagreement. Analyzing data for nine economies for a sample period starting in 1985, we find that the role of gold changes significantly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Gold is unable to serve as a hedge or safe haven in the classical sense while the findings for the period prior to 2008 mostly suggest that gold is able to shield investors. Uncertainty measures display a surprising and time-varying relationship with the path of the gold price. While economic policy uncertainty is positively correlated with gold price changes, macroeconomic uncertainty and inflation uncertainty among forecasters are both negatively related to gold price changes.     

CBDC uncertainty: Financial market implications

The current state of the art in the central bank digital currency (CBDC) literature views indexes constructed from digital currency news to be fully informed about CBDC uncertainty and its impact on the financial system. We argue that the hedging behavior of participants in the currency futures market could be more informative than CBDC uncertainty news in the presence of limited risk absorption capacity in futures markets. We show that the hedging factor has a statistically significant effect on financial market risk aversion and measures of uncertainty. The hedging behavior of currency futures market participants is informative of agents' reactions to the news and central bank policies around CBDC. Our results also show that CBDC uncertainty is a significant risk transmitter in the financial system. Hence, this characteristic makes the hedging factor even more important because it can directly impact risk aversion via its moderating effects, which later influence CBDC uncertainty.     

Evolution of market uncertainty around earnings announcements

This paper investigates theoretically and empirically the dynamics of the implied volatility or implied standard deviation (ISD) around earnings announcements dates. The volatility implied by option prices can be interpreted as the level of volatility expected by the market over the remaining life of the option. We propose a theoretical framework for the evolution of the ISD that takes into account two well-known features of the instantaneous volatility: volatility clustering and the leverage effect. In this context, the ISD should decrease after an earnings announcement but the post-announcement ISD path depends on the content of the earnings announcement: good news or bad news. An empirical investigation is conducted on the Swiss market over the period 1989–1998.     

The price of liquidity: The effects of market conditions and bank characteristics

We study the prices that individual banks pay for liquidity (captured by borrowing rates in repos with the central bank and benchmarked by the overnight index swap) as a function of market conditions and bank characteristics. These prices depend in particular on the distribution of liquidity across banks, which is calculated over time using individual bank-level data on reserve requirements and actual holdings. Banks pay more for liquidity when positions are more imbalanced across banks, consistent with the existence of short squeezing. We also show that small banks pay more for liquidity and are more vulnerable to squeezes. Healthier banks pay less but, contrary to what one might expect, banks in formal liquidity networks do not. State guarantees reduce the price of liquidity but do not protect against squeezes.     

Economic policy uncertainty and stock price crash risk

We examine the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on firm-specific crash risk. Based on a large sample of Chinese listed firms over the period from 2000 to 2017, we provide empirical evidence that firms are more likely to experience stock price crashes when EPU increases. Cross-sectionally analysis further reveals that the impact of EPU on stock price crash risk is stronger for firms whose returns are more sensitive to EPU. More specifically, young stocks, small stocks, high volatility stocks, and growth stocks, which have higher valuation uncertainty per se, are more sensitive to EPU and are more affected by EPU in terms of crash risk. We further show that EPU is significantly and positively associated with aggregated stock price crash risk at the market level.     

Economic policy uncertainty and stock price crash risk

This paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on stock price crash risk using data from China. We develop a new index to measure Chinese economic policy uncertainty and find that economic policy uncertainty has a remarkable positive effect on stock price crash risk. However, the effect reverses later. The results also indicate that the positive effect of economic policy uncertainty on stock price crash risk is more prominent for state‐owned enterprises. Moreover, this effect is more prominent for firms with higher information asymmetry and firms with greater disagreement among investors, indicating that economic policy uncertainty affects crash risk through two mechanisms: managers’ concealment of bad news and investors’ heterogeneous beliefs.     

The ex-dividend day stock price behavior in the Chinese stock market

This paper analyzes the ex-dividend day stock price behavior in the Chinese stock market. This market allows to examine the impact of tax effects while keeping any microstructure factors constant. The findings from non-taxable stocks show that their price, on the ex-dividend day, falls by an amount that is not statistically different from the dividend. For the taxable sample, stock prices of small dividend yield stocks fall proportionally to the dividend paid. For the large dividend yield stocks, the price adjustment depends on the effective tax rate on dividend income. The overall findings are consistent with the tax hypothesis.     

How do banks price liquidity? The role of market power.

We empirically examine the effects of different measures of liquidity on interest margins of a sample of U.S. commercial banks from 2001 to 2018. Overall, the results reveal that liquidity ratios exert a positive influence on bank margins. Furthermore, the study investigates the role of market power in the relationship between liquidity and interest margins. It is documented that dominant banks incorporate the costs associated with investing in liquidity into the bank margins to a lesser extent than banks with less market power, suggesting that the cost of complying with regulatory liquidity standards is reduced when the competition in the banking sector is less intense. The study highlights that market competition might be important in the design and implementation of liquidity regulations.     

The price of liquidity: CD rates charged by money market funds

We examine the cost of liquidity in rates on CDs purchased by money market funds (MMFs). We find no evidence that rates vary directly with the size of CDs. However, we do find that large MMFs receive higher rates on large CDs than small MMFs. This suggests banks pay for (potential) liquidity.