International financial integration through the law of one price: The role of liquidity and capital controls

This paper takes advantage of the fact that some stocks trade both in domestic and international markets to characterize the degree of international financial integration. The paper argues that the cross-market premium (the ratio between the domestic and the international market price of cross-listed stocks) provides a valuable measure of international financial integration and the effectiveness of capital controls. Using autoregressive (AR) models to estimate convergence speeds and non-linear threshold autoregressive (TAR) models to identify non-arbitrage bands, the paper shows that price deviations across markets are rapidly arbitraged away and bands are narrow, particularly so for liquid stocks. The paper also shows that regulations on cross-border capital flows effectively segment domestic markets. As expected, the effects of both types of capital controls are asymmetric but in the opposite direction: controls on outflows induce positive premia, while controls on inflows generate negative premia. Both vary with the intensity of capital controls.     

Does the law of one price hold in international financial markets? Evidence from tick data

This paper investigates the validity of the law of one price (LOP) in international financial markets by examining the frequency, size and duration of inter-market price differentials for borrowing and lending services (‘one-way arbitrage’). Using a unique data set for three major capital and foreign exchange markets that covers a period of more than seven months at tick frequency, we find that the LOP holds on average, but numerous economically significant violations of the LOP arise. The duration of these violations is high enough to make it worthwhile searching for one-way arbitrage opportunities in order to minimize borrowing costs and/or maximize earnings on given funds. We also document that such opportunities decline with the pace of the market and increase with market volatility.     

(How) has the market become more efficient?

Using a portfolio of Dow Jones Industrial Average index constituents and the index ETF, we document significant intraday deviations from the law of one price. These are especially pronounced at very short time intervals. The extent of deviations is related to volatility, liquidity, and transaction costs of both the index constituents and the ETF. Further, the influence of news arrival, and liquidity (volatility) shocks on the deviations persists for several hours. Finally, we document significant decline (by at least 80%) in the deviations between 1998 and 2010. We find that this decline is largely due to decimalization, the repeal of the uptick rule, and the introduction of automated updating of the NYSE order book. Overall, our findings indicate an increase in operational market efficiency.     

Prices and returns on paintings: An exercise on how to price the priceless

Art is priceless, but paintings, and other objects, have been sold on markets since the time of the Roman Empire. In this paper, we describe a method for constructing a price index for paintings and compare this index to the indices of various financial markets. In particular, we discuss whether the price of art is related to financial markets, whether the art market is weakly efficient, and whether it is more or less risky than financial markets.     

Quote inefficiency in options markets

In an arbitrage-free economy with non-zero bid-ask spreads the existence of payoffs whose price is lower than the price of a dominated payoff cannot be discarded in general. However, when the former price corresponds to trivial portfolios which involve buying or selling one unit of the basis assets, its presence, although not an arbitrage, is a severe market anomaly which we refer to as an inefficient quote. In an empirical study, we report evidence that indicates that in options markets both the frequency and the magnitude of these anomalies are substantial and we document puzzling patterns in their behavior.     

Sources of the stock price fluctuations in Chinese equity market

This paper proposes a latent factor approach based on a state–space framework in order to identify which factor, if any, dominates price fluctuations in the Chinese stock markets. We also illustrate the connection of such stock price decomposition with several general equilibrium asset pricing models and show that the decomposition results can potentially offer useful insights with regard to the empirical relevance of asset pricing models. We use quarterly data of the Chinese A-Share equity market over the period 1995Q3–2011Q1 and find that the estimates of the state–space model suggest that the expected return is the primary driving force behind price fluctuations in the Chinese stock market. We show that the time-varying expected returns appear to be counter-cyclical and this result seems to be consistent with the habit formation model of Campbell and Cochrane [1999. By force of habit: A consumption-based explanation of aggregate stock market behavior. Journal of Political Economy 107, no. 2: 205–51.]. However, we also note that there is a great deal of uncertainty with respect to this variance decomposition due to the resulting small signal-to-noise ratio in the estimated state–space model.     

Persistence in law of one price deviations: Evidence from micro-data

Using an extensive micro-price panel, we find a positive cross-sectional relationship between LOP persistence and the distribution margin, which we measure using sectoral U.S. data, as suggested by the classical dichotomy. The median level of persistence (across goods) is low, and there is no evidence of a border effect: the half-life of a deviation is about 19 months across OECD cities and just 1 month lower across cities in the U.S. Aggregating our micro-data using a variety of weighting methods shows PPP persistence to be in the range of 1-2 years, over the 1990-2005 period. These results challenge three widely held views: (i) the classical dichotomy is irrelevant; (ii) high persistence is a robust feature of aggregate real exchange rates; and (iii) border crossings necessarily generate greater real exchange rate persistence.     

价格异常与不对称相关结构下套期保值策略——来自亚洲股指期货市场的实证

在不对称相关结构下,尾部区域期货和现货价格联动模式异常复杂,传统套期保值策略在极端价格行为下将不可避免地出现系统性偏差。为此,恰当的连接函数被引入描述尾部区域的价格联动模式,依据MV框架构建局部套期保值策略,以解决极端价格行为下的套期保值问题。对亚洲市场日经指数和恒生指数期货套期保值的实证研究表明:(1)采用Rotated Gumbel连接函数,在传统MV策略(全局策略)下,虽然在降低套保组合方差方面没有明显优势,但日经指数和恒生指数期货的套期保值成本将显著下降,套保组合收益/组合方差的比率显著上升;(2)如果套期保值者能够对未来形成可靠预期,套期保值的成本将进一步下降,并且现货价格风险也得到有效控制。     

On the origin of power-law tails in price fluctuations

We analyse large stock price changes of more than five standard deviations for (i) TAQ data for the year 1997 and (ii) order book data from the Island ECN for the year 2002. We argue that a large trading volume alone is not a sufficient explanation for large price changes. Instead, we find that a low density of limit orders in the order book, i.e. a small liquidity, is a necessary prerequisite for the occurrence of extreme price fluctuations. Taking into account both order flow and liquidity, large stock price fluctuations can be explained quantitatively.     

当前物价运行及其未来发展趋势

2011年8月以来,CPI同比涨幅持续回落,全年CPI上涨5．4％。从2012年物价走势看,受政策滞后效应和上年同期基数效应影响,上半年物价有望延续回落趋势,而随着政策微调和宏观经济回升,下半年物价重拾升势的可能性较大。预计2012年全年CPI涨幅为3．6％左右。综合考虑我国工业化发展阶段、刘易斯拐点与资源品价格市场化改革等因素来看,中长期内物价仍存在上涨压力。     

An Empirical Re-Examination of the Cross-Section of Expected Returns: UK Evidence

This paper is a study of the Fama and French (1992) analysis in the UK context. Consistent with their findings, our results do not support a positive relationship between beta and average monthly returns. We find that book-to-market equity and market leverage are consistently significant in explaining UK average returns. Contrary to the Fama-French evidence, size has an insignificant effect on average returns. A puzzling negative beta-returns relationship is found in some monthly regressions,and results based on annual data reveal a reversal of betas for the smallest-size portfolios. Some possible explanations are offered for these findings.     

论使用净价进行业绩考核之不合理性

净价虽然能够反映出债券市场收益率的变动和行情的变化,但是却不是一个精确的指标,在实践运用中往往会出现误差。特别是在收益率变动幅度较小的情况下,还会产生严重的方向性错误。因此,建立一个合理有效的债券投资考核体系,除了要继续研究如何推出更有指标意义的债券指数之外,深化金融机构的体制改革,建立内部全面的考核体系,也是必不可少的一环。     

论我国金融期货市场环境及法律

本文分析了我国金融期货市场尚未出现的原因 ,论述了建立金融期货市场所依托的环境以及相关的法律制度 ,提出了我国金融期货市场法律制度的制定应符合我国经济发展的需要 ,应充分考虑我国国情的观点。文章认为金融期货交易是我国经济发展的必然要求 ,但应逐步建立市场 ,并且政府对其监管的力度应大于金融现货市场。     

The effect of self-selection bias on the testing of a stock price reaction to management's earnings forecasts

This study examines the inferential bias due to the failure to control for self-selection when studying the market's reaction to management earnings forecasts. The analysis is conducted by controlling for self-selection and comparing the results to those obtained when self-selection is not controlled. This comparison suggests that the overall inference of a market reaction to the management forecast issuance does not change. However, the statistical significance declines when self-selection is considered. Since the issuance of a management forecast is an obvious self-selection, the results of this study suggest that self-selection should be considered and evaluated in quasi-experimental studies in accounting and finance.     

Semiparametric Estimates of the marginal price of floorspace

Smoothing splines are used to generate a nonparametric response of housing price to floorspace size. A rising marginal price is estimated. Comparison to common parametric forms indicates that the semilog is reasonably close to the nonparametric form.     

The Robustness of the Conditional CAPM with Human Capital

An empirical evaluation is provided of the robustness of theconditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) with human capitalto explain the cross-sectional variability of security returns.This model has been evaluated in the literature using the growthrate in per capita labor income. This article looks at richermeasures of human capital returns. It develops measures thatincorporate the costs and benefits of educational investment,skill premiums, worker experience, and other relevant featuresof human capital markets. It also considers variables that helpto forecast future human capital returns. We find that someof these richer measures help improve substantially the performanceof the model.     

我国债券市场价格波动的均衡与因果分析

债券价格的决定理论主要有古典利率理论、流动偏好理论、可贷资金理论和理性预期理论。本文采用协整和因果检验方法，研究宏观经济变量、货币金融变量与我国债券市场价格波动的联动和因果关系。我国债券市场价格与固定资产投资、净出口，物价指数、货币供应量、金融机构存贷款和外汇储备存在长期均衡关系。居民储蓄和净出口对我国债券市场价格走势具有单向引导关系，我国债券市场价格对固定资产投资和金融机构存款具有显著影响。     

On the use of measure-valued strategies in bond markets

We propose here a theory of cylindrical stochastic integration, recently developed by Mikulevicius and Rozovskii, as mathematical background to the theory of bond markets. In this theory, since there is a continuum of securities, it seems natural to define a portfolio as a measure on maturities. However, it turns out that this set of strategies is not complete, and the theory of cylindrical integration allows one to overcome this difficulty. Our approach generalizes the measure-valued strategies: this explains some known results, such as approximate completeness, but at the same time it also shows that either the optimal strategy is based on a finite number of bonds or it is not necessarily a measure-valued process.Received: November 2002, Mathematics Subject Classification: 60H05, 60G60, 90A09JEL Classification: G10, E43The first author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the CNR Strategic Project Modellizzazione matematica di fenomeni economici. We thank professors A. Bagchi, R. Douady and J. Zabczyk for helpful discussions. A special thanks goes to professors T. Björk, Y. Kabanov and W. Schachermayer for comments and suggestions which contributed to improve the final version of this paper.     

Price Expectation and the Pricing of Stock Index Futures

Capital markets are not perfect or frictionless, and arbitrage mechanism cannot be complete, particularly for index arbitrage. This study constructs a theoretical foundation to explain why the price expectation of the underlying asset should be entered into the pricing formula of stock index futures. The price expectation and incompleteness of arbitrage then are taken into account to develop a pricing model of stock index futures in imperfect markets. This study also presents three approaches for estimating the model parameter. Finally, the concept of the degree of market imperfection is defined and the valuation model is provided.