Arbitrage opportunities,liquidity provision,and trader types in an index option market

This study examines the impact of arbitrage in put–call futures parity (PCFP) violations on option market liquidity and explores the liquidity provision process by trader type during periods of arbitrage exploitation. Using a unique data set comprising the complete history of transactions, we find that PCFP violations contain toxic arbitrage opportunities. Hence, more frequent toxic arbitrage opportunities can cause liquidity to deteriorate because arbitrageurs create adverse selection costs and order imbalances in the option market. In addition, when the law of one price breaks down, market makers dominate by providing liquidity compared with individual, domestic, and foreign institutional traders.     

Portfolio choice with small temporary and transient price impact

We study portfolio selection in a model with both temporary and transient price impact introduced by Garleanu and Pedersen. In the large‐liquidity limit where both frictions are small, we derive explicit formulas for the asymptotically optimal trading rate and the corresponding minimal leading‐order performance loss. We find that the losses are governed by the volatility of the frictionless target strategy, like in models with only temporary price impact. In contrast, the corresponding optimal portfolio not only tracks the frictionless optimizer, but also exploits the displacement of the market price from its unaffected level.     

Local costs of distribution,international trade costs and micro evidence on the law of one price

This paper connects trade flows to deviations from the law of one price (LOOP) in a structural model of trade and retailing. It accounts for the observed cross-country dispersion in prices of goods, based on retail price survey data, by focusing on two sources of goods market segmentation — (i) international trade costs, and (ii) non-traded input costs of distribution. I find that a multi-sector Ricardian trade model, ala Eaton–Kortum, augmented with a distribution sector, can account for the average price dispersion for a basket of goods fully and generates 70% of the variation in price dispersion across goods within the basket. While tradability of goods is important in explaining the average price dispersion for the basket of goods, distribution costs are important in explaining why, within the basket, some goods show more price dispersion than others.     

Who should practice price discrimination using rebates in an asymmetric duopoly?

Price discrimination is generally thought to improve firm profits by allowing firms to extract more consumer surplus. In competition, however, price discrimination may also be costly to the firm because restrictive incentive compatibility conditions may allow the competing firm to gain market share at the discriminating firm’s expense. Therefore, with asymmetric competition, it may be the case that one firm would let the other firm assume the burden of price discrimination. We investigate optimal segmentation in a market with two asymmetric firms and two heterogeneous consumer segments that differ in the importance of price and product attributes. In particular, we investigate second-degree price discrimination under competition with explicit incentive compatibility constraints thus extending prior work in marketing and economics. Focusing on the managerial implications, we explore whether it would be profitable for either or both firms to pursue a segmentation strategy using rebates as a mechanism. We identify conditions under which one or both firms would want to pursue such segmentation. We find that segmentation lessens competition for the less price-sensitive consumer segment and that this results in higher profits to both firms. A key to understanding this result is that segmentation leads to consumer remixing. We establish the key result that if firms are asymmetric in their attractiveness to consumers, the disadvantaged firm in our model is more likely to pursue a segmentation strategy than its rival in equilibrium. We then ask whether this result prevails in practice. To this end, we explore competitive segmentation empirically and are able to verify that disadvantaged firms indeed pursue segmentation through rebates with greater likelihood.     

Market integration and convergence to the Law of One Price: evidence from the European car market

This paper exploits the unique case of European market integration to investigate the relationship between integration and price convergence in international markets. Using a panel data set of car prices, we examine how the process of integration has affected cross-country price dispersion in Europe. We find surprisingly strong evidence of convergence towards both the absolute and the relative versions of the Law of One Price (LOOP). Our analysis illuminates the main sources of segmentation in international markets and suggests the type of institutional changes that can successfully reduce it.     

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall”: Retail price differences across U.S. cities

This paper examines the evidence for nonlinear price behavior in retail goods prices across U.S. cities. First, a simple continuous-time model is used to explore the types of price behavior that can arise in the presence of market frictions. These frictions could be interpreted as transport costs, but we prefer a broader interpretation in which they operate at the level of technology and preferences. Second, we gather price data from 24 U.S. cities on individual goods like orange juice and toothpaste. The empirical analysis reveals that price discrepancies between U.S. cities are stationary and nonlinearly mean-reverting to price parity.     

The elasticity of trade: Estimates and evidence

Quantitative results from a large class of structural gravity models of international trade depend critically on the elasticity of trade with respect to trade frictions. We develop a new simulated method of moments estimator to estimate this elasticity from disaggregate price and trade-flow data and we use it within Eaton and Kortum's (2002) Ricardian model. We apply our estimator to disaggregate price and trade-flow data for 123 countries in the year 2004. Our method yields a trade elasticity of roughly four, nearly fifty percent lower than Eaton and Kortum's (2002) approach. This difference doubles the welfare gains from international trade.     

China's segmented stock market: An application of the conditional international capital asset pricing model

China's segmented stock market provides an opportunity to study conditional international asset pricing from multiple viewpoints—domestic and foreign. We use the multivariate GARCH-M framework of De Santis and Gérard [De Santis, G., and Gérard, B., 1998. How big is the premium for currency risk? Journal of Financial Economics 49, pp. 375–412.], but add conditional local specific risk and find global, local, and currency risk to be priced and time-varying in Chinese markets, suggesting mild segmentation for developing country markets. The time-varying price of currency risk indicates that the strict currency restrictions in China do not sufficiently reduce currency risk to stabilize the price of currency risk. We also find that the price of local risk in the Chinese A stock market is non-time-varying relative to the developed market, but time-varying relative to the emerging market. This finding implies that the Chinese A stock market is more comparable to a developed market than an emerging market. However, results on Chinese B shares show the opposite relationship: from a foreign investor's perspective, Chinese B shares are better categorized as being emerging than developed. This is further supported by an Engle–Granger cointegration test.     

Globalisation and Policy Effects in Africa

Globalisation or market integration in Sub‐Saharan Africa is closely linked to the structural adjustment programmes. In this paper we focus on their dependence on the politics and institutional characteristics of the countries concerned. In particular, we argue that one important explanation for the dismal performance of many African countries, in spite of all the measures taken towards market liberalisation, is the combination of, first, a magnification of the effects of policy and, second, a lack of willingness or ability on the part of politicians to respect the restrictions imposed on their behaviour and policy choices by the liberalised markets. We look at how the increased exposure to international prices and returns on assets make the economic equilibrium relations – the law of one price and uncovered interest parity – relevant guidelines for economic policy. The argument is illustrated by the case of Zimbabwe, where lack of respect for the restrictions imposed by international markets has led to an economic crisis with negative growth rates and a departure from globalisation.     

The effect of trade liberalization on child labor

The question of how trade liberalization affects the employment of children in developing economies is at the core of the debate on globalization. Trade theory predicts that an increase in the price of an exported good could either increase or decrease child labor depending on the magnitudes of the substitution and income effects. In this paper, we study the relationship between changes in the relative price of an exported commodity and child labor using household-level data from within a poor country. In particular, we relate child labor to regional and intertemporal variation in the real price of rice surrounding national and international rice market integration in Vietnam. We find that higher rice prices are associated with declines in child labor. Income effects play an important role in this relationship. Rice price increases are associated with the largest declines in child labor in households that are large net producers of rice. These findings show that greater market integration can be associated with less child labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of punitive trade sanctions on exports from developing countries to eradicate child labor is unlikely to yield the desired outcome.     

Viability and Equilibrium in Securities Markets with Frictions

In this paper we study some foundational issues in the theory of asset pricing with market frictions. We model market frictions by letting the set of marketed contingent claims (the opportunity set) be a convex set, and the pricing rule at which these claims are available be convex. This is the reduced form of multiperiod securities price models incorporating a large class of market frictions. It is said to be viable as a model of economic equilibrium if there exist price-taking maximizing agents who are happy with their initial endowment, given the opportunity set, and hence for whom supply equals demand. This is equivalent to the existence of a positive lineaar pricing rule on the entirespace of contingent claims—an underlying frictionless linear pricing rule—that lies below the convex pricing rule on the set of marketed claims. This is also equivalent to the absence of asymptotic free lunches—a generalization of opportunities of arbitrage. When a market for a nonmarketed contingent claim opens, a bid-ask price pair for this claim is said to be consistent if it is a bid-ask price pair in at least a viable economy with this extended opportunity set. If the set of marketed contingent claims is a convex cone and the pricing rule is convex and sublinear, we show that the set of consistent prices of a claim is a closed interval and is equal (up to its boundary) to the set of its prices for all the underlying frictionless pricing rules. We also show that there exists a unique extended consistent sublinear pricing rule—the supremum of the underlying frictionless linear pricing rules—for which the original equilibrium does not collapse when a new market opens, regardless of preferences and endowments. If the opportunity set is the reduced form of a multiperiod securities market model, we study the closedness of the interval of prices of a contingent claim for the underlying frictionless pricing rules.     

Nominal rigidity, desired markup variations, and real exchange rate persistence

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic general-equilibrium sticky-price model that accounts for real exchange rate persistence. The key feature of the model is the dependence of the firm's desired markup on its relative price. Desired markup variations exacerbate the nominal rigidity that results from the exogenously imposed frictions in the goods market. The model is estimated by the maximum-likelihood method using Canadian and U.S. data. The estimated model successfully replicates the properties of the Canada-U.S. bilateral real exchange rate. In particular, the model closely matches the persistence found in the real exchange rate series. More importantly, this is achieved with a plausible duration of price contracts and a moderate convexity of the demand function.     

基于法律规制视角的价格违法行为分析

价格是市场最活跃的因素,也是政府重点监管的市场要素.不同的社会经济条件下所反映出的价格问题有所不同.近年来,我国市场上的价格违法行为日益突出并呈现出几个较为明显的特点:一是价格违法的行为主体较多是在市场上具有较强优势地位的大型企业,具有较大的市场支配力;二是价格违法行为大多系市场上早巳存在,且已经为法律明确禁止的一般性不正当价格行为,并未产生新的违法形式;三是违法行为产生的市场影响较大,严重扰乱了市场秩序,社会反响强烈.从法律规制的视角看,价格违法事件的存在,既有法律规制本身存在的强制力不足的原因,也有市场监管中监管交叉与监管真空造成监管不得力的原因.为进一步完善市场价格法制环境,应在不断完善我国现有价格法律法规体系的同时,重视市场监管机制建设,实现监管主体的多元化与监管手段的多样化,完善信息披露制度等市场监管制度建设.     

中美、日美纺织品贸易摩擦比较及其启示

基于对日美、中美纺织品贸易摩擦状况的回顾,本文提出在贸易摩擦中提高产业国际竞争力,利用贸易摩擦推动国内产业结构升级,借鉴日本贸易谈判应对经验,抵制贸易摩擦给人民币升值和资本市场开放带来的压力,更多地运用世贸组织等多边贸易摩擦解决机制等建议。     

TRADING WITH SMALL PRICE IMPACT

An investor trades a safe and several risky assets with linear price impact to maximize expected utility from terminal wealth. In the limit for small impact costs, we explicitly determine the optimal policy and welfare, in a general Markovian setting allowing for stochastic market, cost, and preference parameters. These results shed light on the general structure of the problem at hand, and also unveil close connections to optimal execution problems and to other market frictions such as proportional and fixed transaction costs.     

国际粮价对国内粮价传递效应研究——以大米、小麦和玉米为例

根据2002年1月至2010年12月的月度数据,运用协整分析、误差修正模型以及脉冲响应函数等方法分析了入世以来国际粮食价格对国内粮食价格波动的影响。结果表明:长期而言,国内粮食市场与国际市场的市场整合度不高,价格传递不完全;短期内,国际粮价对国内粮价的影响也较小;国际价格对国内价格变动的贡献在不断加大,但仍处于较低的水平,主要原因来自于进口需求的低水平、政府的边境控制和国内支持政策。     

Ex-dividend day price behavior and liquidity in a tax-free emerging market

This paper investigates the effect of liquidity on the ex-dividend day price premium. It is well documented that prices drop less than the dividend amount on the ex-day; this market inefficiency is generally attributed to the tax-induced clientele effect and various structural frictions. We show that, even in a tax-free market characterized by the presence of large block holders and the absence of the usual microstructure impediments, abnormal returns persist. Using a newly defined free-float adjusted measure of market fluidity, we find that liquidity is economically and statistically significant in the determination of the ex-dividend day price anomaly, indicating that trading restrictions can partially explain the ex-dividend return puzzle.     

基于产业博弈视角的国际贸易摩擦分析

世界各国产业结构在形成整体性演进中,在具有重要战略意义的农业及高利润产业,呈现了动态上同构的加速趋势.产业结构的同构引发了市场上的激烈竞争,致使各国之间的国际贸易摩擦风起云涌.解决国际贸易摩擦最好的办法就是在全球范围内构建结构互补、水平分工与垂直分工交织并存的国际分工网络体系.     

关于应对国际石油价格上涨的思考

2008年,国际石油价格持续上涨,有石油供给和需求方面的原因,但更主要的是国际石油市场交易方面的原因。本文分析了国际石油价格持续高位运行对我国经济的影响,探讨了如何应对国际石油价格上涨的相应策略。