Inventory management effects,isolated: Evidence from the federal funds market

The federal funds market is highly competitive, has uniform information, and does not have most order-processing cost components of equity markets. Hence, it provides an opportunity to study the effect of inventory management on the bid-ask spread in an isolated fashion. Using a unique data set of daily borrowing and lending federal funds quotes posted by a large commercial bank, we find that the bank maintains a fairly constant bid-ask spread throughout a two-week reserve maintenance period. It acts similarly to a market maker facilitating flow of funds between depository institutions throughout the reserve maintenance period. The bank becomes more active toward the end of the period. In particular, on settlement Wednesday it increases the bid and ask quotes relative to the effective federal funds rate in an apparent attempt to manage its reserve inventory and satisfy its own reserve requirements.     

Forecasting the daily federal funds rate

This paper compares two alternative one-day-ahead forecasts of tomorrow's federal funds rate. The first forecast is a simple random walk forecast in which the forecast of tomorrow's federal funds rate is taken to be today's federal funds rate. The second forecast is an ARIMA model forecast that was allowed to vary with changes in the Federal Reserve System's operating procedures. These two forecasts are compared in terms of their general forecast accuracy and the decision support they provide to a financial institution hypothesized to be borrowing $7 million a week in the federal funds market. Even in cases felt to be most favorable to the ARIMA forecasts, the degree of forecast accuracy and decision support superiority of the ARIMA forecasts is found to be quite small.     

Impact study on the interest rate futures market

Any announcement from the Federal Reserve has a huge impact on the interest rate markets. The press releases from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) are major inputs to the market and the random intervention model is applied to interest rate futures transaction data to measure FOMC announcement impact. Missing prices during non-trading time periods are imputed iteratively during the estimation of model parameters. The study shows that the market trading on the announcement day is different from the market trading on a non-announcement for both the Eurodollar and T-Note futures market.     

SEC储量评估与中国储量评价的区别

美国证券交易委员会（SEC）制定了油气储量评估规则（SEC准则）。根据SEC准则计算的油气储量称为SEC储量。文章介绍了SEC储量与中国储量的概念、分类及计算方法,分析了SEC储量与中国储量标准的差异。     

On the loss structure of federal reserve forecasts of output growth

Utilizing recent techniques with comparable private forecasts as benchmarks, we test the rationality of the Federal Reserve forecasts of growth under flexible loss. Our findings for 1984–2006 indicate that these forecasts are rational (efficient) and directionally accurate under symmetric loss and are thus of value when similar cost is assigned to both incorrect upward and downward predictions. Over-predictions (under-predictions) are costly when the Fed responds by implementing an unnecessary contractionary (expansionary) monetary policy and thus causes lower growth (higher inflation). Symmetric loss thus indicates that the Fed is equally concerned about both low growth and high inflation. Further results reveal that the private sector closely replicates the Federal Reserve forecasts released to the public with a five-year lag, suggesting that one can utilize the readily available private data as proxies for the not-yet-released Federal Reserve forecasts.     

Hoarding international reserves versus a Pigovian tax-cum-subsidy scheme: Reflections on the deleveraging crisis of 2008-2009, and a cost benefit analysis

We outline the case for supporting self-insurance by imposing a tax on external borrowing in a model of an emerging market. Entrepreneurs finance tangible investments via bank intermediation of foreign borrowing, exposing the economy to negative fire-sale externalities at times of deleveraging; a risk that increases with the ratio of aggregate external borrowing to international reserves. Price taking economic agents ignore their marginal impact on the expected cost of a deleveraging crisis. The optimal borrowing tax reduces the distorted activity, external borrowing, and induces borrowers to co-finance the precautionary hoarding of international reserves.     

The Alternative of Private Regulation: The London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market as a Model

Most people assume that markets require a strong set of government rules and regulations to eliminate problems associated with transparency and fraud. Commonly overlooked is the fact that stock exchanges did, and to a large extent still do, provide a set of private rules and regulations. One modern stock exchange that relies heavily on private rather than government regulation is the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM). Founded in 1995, AIM is an exchange regulated market in which private regulators, called Nominated Advisors or Nomads, oversee individual firms and decide whether they can list their shares. This system of private regulation reduces regulatory barriers and has attracted many new firms. But rather than being ‘a race to the bottom’ in which anything goes, the private regulators work to put their stamp of approval only on firms that warrant trading. The market has attracted a lot of investment, and the survival rate of IPOs is in line with that of other more regulated markets.     

Federal reserve independence

The Federal Reserve is always called an independent agency. The term “independent” is rarely defined. The only attempt in the literature and internal records is based on Chairman Martin’s statement that “the Federal Reserve is independent with the government, not independent of the government.” Martin explained several times that independence within government meant that the Federal Reserve helped to finance government budget because they were approved by Congress and signed by the president. Financing budget deficits is the very opposite of the principle adopted when Congress approved the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. In fact, the Federal Reserve has supported Treasury operations many times. I conclude that it is far more important to have an enforceable policy rule such as the Taylor rule, but any rule must have a provision that permits the rule to be set aside.     

Insider Trading, Earnings Management and Corporate Governance: Empirical Evidence Based on Hong Kong Firms

We document positive association between earnings management and insider selling after the fiscal year‐end for Hong Kong firms. This positive association is especially evident before the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Our findings suggest that Hong Kong executives manage reported earnings to maximize their private benefits from insider selling. Additionally, we find that a higher proportion of independent directors (INED) on corporate boards moderate the positive association between insider selling and earnings management. Stricter monitoring of earnings management by INED is especially evident when no member of the family with majority ownership is present on corporate boards as a director. This suggests that the presence of family members with majority ownership on corporate boards significantly reduces INED's monitoring effectiveness. Our findings suggest that strict regulations are needed to control insider trading, and independence of corporate boards is important for monitoring of earnings management associated with insider trading. Furthermore, appointment of family members with majority shareholdings should be avoided to enhance independence and to monitor effectiveness of corporate boards.     

新疆阿尔金山国家级自然保护区管理的现状及存在问题

自然保护区是保护自然资源和生物多样性的重要手段。随着我国自然保护区事业的蓬勃发展,保护区在管理过程中彰显出各种问题。本文以新疆阿尔金山国家级自然保护区为研究对象,研究表明:保护区在管理过程中存在着较多问题,并提出相应的解决措施,为阿尔金山国家级自然保护区提高管理水平打造一流自然保护区,提供管理思路和参考。     

The importance of rules-based monetary policy in practice

This paper draws on several actual policy experiences of the author to demonstrate why it is important to have a rules-based monetary policy. These experiences show that policy rules provide a needed “steady as you go” strategy and serve as an insurance against excessive intervention. They also show why in practice one must consider rules-based policy in the broader policy context in which the Federal Reserve operates.     

强化成本管理 提升企业经济

强化成本管理是企业经济管理的重要环节,是一项十分重要的具体工作。加强企业成本管理是现代企业发展的必由之路,在企业的管理过程中,只有合理地确定成本管理的途径,并逐步完善各项规章制度,才能有效提高企业的经济效益,才能促进企业的健康发展。     

Policy rules in practice

Over the past twenty years, monetary policy rules have played an increasingly central role in disucssions of monetary policy strategy and tactics at the Federal Reserve. This represented a sea change in thinking about monetary policy in terms of a systematic startagey rather than a sequence of policy decisions.     

Monetary rules: Theory and practice

President Charles Plosser discusses his views on the benefits of a systematic and rule-like approach to monetary policy.President Plosser outlines his proposals to indicate the likely behavior of the policy rate based on a few different Taylor-like rules that have been consistent with past conduct of monetary policy and are robust to our uncertainties regarding the true economic model.President Plosser believes that the model created by the Federal Reserve Board staff, called FRB/US, seems to be a reasonable starting point for providing economic forecasts based on those rule-based policies; however, other models would be useful to consider.     

Euro‐insurance‐bonds: a long‐term solution for the European sovereign debt problem?

This article proposes that all new Euro area sovereign borrowing be in the form of jointly underwritten ‘Euro‐insurance‐bonds’ trading at the same price for outside investors. To avoid classic moral hazard problems and to insure the guarantors against default, each country would pay a risk premium conditional on economic fundamentals to a joint debt management agency…     

Inferring Policy Objectives from Economic Outcomes*

Estimated policy rules are reduced‐form equations that are silent on many important policy questions. However, a structural understanding of monetary policy can be obtained by estimating a policymaker's objective function. The paper derives conditions under which the parameters in a policymaker's policy objective function can be identified and estimated. We apply these conditions to a New Keynesian sticky‐price model of the US economy. The results show that the implicit inflation target and the relative weight placed on interest rate smoothing both declined when Paul Volcker was appointed Federal Reserve chairman.     

从沃尔克的反通货膨胀看降低通货膨胀的权衡取舍

通货膨胀将对国民经济带来巨大的风险,决策者有责任抑制通货膨胀,然而菲利普斯曲线揭示了降低通货膨胀是以增加短期失业为代价的。文章通过分析上世纪八十年代美联储主席保罗.沃尔克的反通货膨胀,对决策者降低通货膨胀所面临的权衡取舍以及如何使代价最小化进行探讨。     

The global monetary boom - no cause for panic

• ▀ Global monetary growth has been its fastest for decades over recent months, but we continue to believe inflation risks are lower than many think. A modest inflation overshoot in the coming years is possible but would not be very damaging.
• ▀ While headline money growth figures still look strong, heavy precautionary borrowing by firms in March-April is already starting to unwind in the US and UK. About 80% of the rise in borrowing by large UK firms has been repaid.
• ▀ In addition, tightened lending standards at banks are likely to weigh on future corporate borrowing and money growth. A net 70% of US banks tightened corporate credit standards in the latest Fed survey. Rising loan defaults risk exacerbating this.
• ▀ Heavy government borrowing and accompanying central bank QE have been key drivers of monetary growth and are likely to remain so, notwithstanding a slowdown in the pace of central bank bond purchases. This is the main risk factor those who fear inflation cite.
• ▀ But if credit to the private sector starts to shrink, deficit financing of this sort may be essential to prevent long-term weakness in money, credit, and economic growth. Japan's experience in the 1990s and 2000s is relevant here.
• ▀ Inflation also has room to overshoot current targets, if necessary, given the substantial undershoots of the last decade. This consideration in part explains the recent shift in Federal Reserve thinking towards targeting an average inflation rate over time

     

Profit opportunities with the American put-call parity when dividends are not expected

The objective of this research is to study borrowing and lending profit opportunities with the put-call parity of American options when dividends on the stock are not expected. Studying profit opportunities embedded in the put-call parity is intriguing because of their relative simplicity. The only assumptions necessary for the parity to hold are that option markets are frictionless and generate efficient prices of puts and calls around the underlying stock price. For this reason alone (parsimony of postulates) the put-call parity is a tempting vehicle for studying option market efficiency. In this work it is shown that both synthetic lending and borrowing parities (before and after transaction costs), on average and ex post, have negative expected profits (i.e. put-call parity implied rates are inferior to the observed riskless rate). When certain trading rules are established, however, empirical evidence of substantial profit opportunities with both lending and borrowing with the American parity (even after considering transaction costs) is observed. It is also shown that these opportunities are greater for some stocks than for others. The existence of these disparities might be an indication that the pricing mechanism of the respective options is not always in sync. The duration of disequilibrium between the options market and the stock market suggests that such occurrences are not just random bursts.     

Rules for a lender of last resort: An historical perspective

The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 to be a lender of last resort. Paul Warburg, its principal architect had in mind that a U.S. central bank would follow Bagehot׳s strictures ‘to lend freely at a penalty rate’ in the face of a scramble for high powered money. Yet the Federal Reserve Act never spelled out how the Fed was supposed to act as an LLR. This omission came to the fore in the Great Contraction 1929 to 1933 when the Fed failed to prevent four banking panics which turned a serious recession into the Great Contraction. Reforms in the 1930s corrected some of the Fed׳s failures but clamped down on financial activity for 40 years. The financial crisis problem returned in the 1970s with financial liberalization. The Fed abandoned Bagehot׳s strictures and adopted the ‘Too big to fail’ doctrine and ‘creative ambiguity’. This policy shift contributed to moral hazard and created new threats to financial stability with the rise of the ‘shadow banking system’. The subprime mortgage crisis prompted the Fed to take unprecedented LLR activities which have opened up a Pandora׳s box of perils. The Fed has moved away from rules based policy in its LLR function.