An econometric analysis of the effects of market liberalization on price dynamics and price volatility

The paper investigates price dynamics under market liberalization, with a focus on the effects of lowering price floors. We analyze price dynamics by specifying and estimating a dynamic Tobit model under time-varying volatility, where the market price is censored by a government-set support price. The model is applied to the U.S. butter market over the last three decades. The econometric results show how the price support program affects both expected prices and the volatility of prices. It is found that the censoring effects of a price support program can be significant and large even if the price support is set relatively low.

How large is liquidity risk in an automated auction market?

We introduce a new empirical methodology that models liquidity risk over short time periods for impatient traders who submit market orders. Using Value-at-Risk type measures, we quantify the liquidity risk premia for portfolios and individual stocks traded on the automated auction market Xetra. The specificity of our approach relies on the adequate econometric modelling of the potential price impact incurred by the liquidation of a portfolio. We study the sensitivity of liquidity risk towards portfolio size and traders' time horizon, and interpret its diurnal variation in the light of market microstructure theory.

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Econometric estimation of PCAIDS models

This paper presents a version of the proportionally calibrated almost ideal demand system (PCAIDS) model, useful for merger simulations, which can be econometrically estimated using price data for two firms in a market. PCAIDS is therefore seen as a set of restrictions to be imposed in an econometric estimation, and not only as a pure calibration method. The proposed model is applied to a database of the Argentine gasoline market, and its results are compared to the ones obtained with other alternative specifications.

Deregulated Wholesale Electricity Prices in Italy: An Empirical Analysis

In this paper we analyze a time series of daily average prices in the Italian electricity market, which started to operate as a Pool in April 2004. Our objective is to model the high degree of autocorrelation and the multiple seasonalities in electricity prices. We use periodic time series models with GARCH disturbances and leptokurtic distributions and compare their performance with more classical ARMA-GARCH processes. The within-year seasonal variation is modelled using the low-frequency components of physical quantities, which are very regular throughout the sample. Our results reveal that much of the variability in the price series is explained by the interactions between deterministic multiple seasonalities. Periodic AR-GARCH models seem to perform quite well in mimicking the features of the stochastic part of the price process.

Transaction tax and stock market behavior: evidence from an emerging market

This study examines the impact of a stamp tax rate increase on market behavior, using data from two stock exchanges in China. We find that when the tax rate increases from 0.3 to 0.5% (which implies that the transaction cost increases by about 1/3) trading volume decreases by 1/3. This implies an elasticity of turnover with respect to a stamp tax of −50% and an elasticity of turnover with respect to transaction cost of −100%. The markets’ volatility significantly increases after the increase in the tax rate. Furthermore, the change in the volatility structure indicates that the markets become less efficient in the sense that shocks are less quickly assimilated in the markets.

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Competition and bargaining in vertical relationships with market uncertainty

We go through the decision to vertically integrate or its opposite, outsource, in an uncertain environment. We consider two different market strategies, price setting and quantity setting and two different vertical relationships: an (imperfectly) competitive one following Stackelberg mode and a more cooperative one with bargaining. In the first scenario, with certainty, price and quantity settings are alike, while with uncertainty the ranking changes. If a bargaining framework is adopted instead, quantity setting under uncertainty leads to an asymmetric distribution of realized gains along the vertical chain. Price setting turns out to be more equitable for firms and preferable even by consumers.

Order aggressiveness and order book dynamics

In this paper, we study the determinants of order aggressiveness and traders’ order submission strategy in an open limit order book market. Applying an order classification scheme, we model the most aggressive market orders, limit orders as well as cancellations on both sides of the market employing a six-dimensional autoregressive conditional intensity model. Using order book data from the Australian Stock Exchange, we find that market depth, the queued volume, the bid-ask spread, recent volatility, as well as recent changes in both the order flow and the price play an important role in explaining the determinants of order aggressiveness. Overall, our empirical results broadly confirm theoretical predictions on limit order book trading. However, we also find evidence for behavior that can be attributed to particular liquidity and volatility effects.

Tariffs,trade and unemployment in a disequilibrium model: issues and policies

This paper studies the disequilibrium transition process engaged by increased openness to trade, and the effect of institutions, market behaviors and economic policies on that transition. The issue is analyzed with a simple two country (north and south), two goods model, amended in order to take into account the time dimension of both the production and the decision processes. Investigating the consequences of a tariff decrease by means of numerical simulations, we show to what extent wage and price setting, and the degree of tightness of monetary policy affect the outcome of the disequilibrium process. The main result is that capturing the gains associated with international trade requires market behaviors and economic policies, which are rather different from what is usually prescribed.

The behavior of the exchange rate in the genetic algorithm with agents having long memory

This paper studies the behavior of the exchange rate in Kareken and Wallace (1981)'s model under the genetic algorithm adaptation with agents having long memory. The simulation results show that, if agents have full memory, the average portfolio fraction will converge, and the initial equilibrium that it converges to is history dependent. Under the lasting evolutionary pressure of the noise trader, the market will eventually drift from one equilibrium to another, and asymptotically will converge to the neighborhood of an equilibrium with agents putting their savings equally into two currencies. If the agents do not have full memory, the foreign exchange market will show periodic crisis. Before and after a market crises, the average portfolio fraction will converge to different stationary equilibria. A mean difference equation of the average portfolio fraction is also given to describe the dynamics of the model.

Price-setting behavior of Austrian firms

This paper explores nominal rigidities by investigating price-setting behavior of Austrian firms based on survey evidence. Distinguishing between two stages of price setting—first the price reviewing phase and second the price changing phase—our results suggest that the main obstacles to price flexibility lie on the second stage. Our main result is that firms postpone price adjustments, because they are afraid to antagonize customers with frequent price changes. Thus, customer relationships - especially those with consumers—are a major source of price stickiness in the Austrian economy.

Modelling financial transaction price movements: a dynamic integer count data model

In this paper we develop a dynamic model for integer counts to capture fundamental properties of financial prices at the transaction level. Our model relies on an autoregressive multinomial component for the direction of the price change and a dynamic count data component for the size of the price changes. Since the model is capable of capturing a wide range of discrete price movements it is particularly suited for financial markets where the trading intensity is moderate or low. We present the model at work by applying it to transaction data of two shares traded at the NYSE traded over a period of one trading month. We show that the model is well suited to test some theoretical implications of the market microstructure theory on the relationship between price movements and other marks of the trading process. Based on density forecast methods modified for the case of discrete random variables we show that our model is capable to explain large parts of the observed distribution of price changes at the transaction level.

The true story of wine and cloth, or: building blocks of an evolutionary political economy of international trade

Standard trade theory is a theory about the structure of international production which emerges from an international arbitrage equilibrium. It is not a theory about the activity of trading which is simply taken for granted or which is treated implicitly in the concept of exogenous trade costs. This paper proposes an alternative evolutionary framework based on networks as structures of non-price interactions into which price/quantity-interactions are embedded. These networks manifest different levels with specific problems of coordination and communication, i.e. levels of market transactions, of transaction-enabling transactions, of markets for market access rights, and of the respective transaction-enabling transactions. Furthermore, the theory is based on the analysis of capabilities to trade, resting upon competitive advantage, which cannot be imitated. The exploitation of competitive advantage presupposes the capability to control network interactions, identified as social capital. Finally, the security of market access reflects power balances among countries.

Intra-industry differences in vertical integration, heterogeneous costs and pricing: the case of web hosting

In many differentiated product industries, both traditional and “new economy” activities, vertically integrated firms also supply inputs to apparent rivals in the downstream business. This generates heterogeneity between low- and high-sunk cost suppliers with implications for entry and competitive conduct. The web hosting market is typical with primary suppliers operating alongside resellers who rent server space from them. We explore the impact of competition in US hosting using a unique dataset covering 15,000 packages offered by 3,500 firms. The results suggest price is sensitive to competitor clustering in quality space; an outcome consistent with easy entry for resellers with ultra-low fixed costs.

Can labour market institutions explain high unemployment rates in the new EU member states?

This article studies the question whether labour market institutions can explain the large differences in unemployment rates in the new member states. It investigates several labour market institutions and concludes that they are on average no more rigid in the new member states than in the old ones. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity both in terms of institutions and unemployment rates. The impact of labour market institutions on performance is empirically examined for a panel of European countries. These results are used to assess to what extent labour market institutions are responsible for the diverse unemployment experiences in the new member states. Labour market institutions can explain only a small part of these differences. Other causes of unemployment seem to be more important.

Austrian economics and the analysis of labor markets

Theory and policy relating to labor markets is dominated by the mainstream labor market model, although a less well-known, socioeconomic version can also be identified. The mainstream model is methodologically flawed and forced, thereby, to relegate any (serious) investigation of labor market institutions and/or social structures to the margins of its analysis. The socioeconomic account is not so much methodologically flawed, as methodologically ambivalent. While this ambivalence does not actually prevent the investigation of institutions and/or social structures, it does promote ambiguity whenever we inquire into the precise nature of the interaction between them and labor markets. Insights from Austrian economics, when used in collaboration with critical realist methodology, can play a part in augmenting the socioeconomic account, generating a totally new approach to the analysis of labor markets.

When should regions bid for artistic resources?

Under a variety of assumptions, subsidized bidding for creative resources fails to spur economic growth. First, under many conditions, the resource would find an optimal location in any case. Second, the bid may be good for a winning city's economy, but bad for the arts more generally. The bid winner is not necessarily the most appropriate home for the resource. Third, bids based on publicly available information are unlikely to beat the market price for attracting those resources. The key to stimulating growth, and drawing successful creative resources, is to stimulate the underlying microconditions for entrepreneurship, whether in the private or public sectors. Furthermore, we should make arts subsidies less location-specific.

How does monetary policy transmission mechanism work in Fiji?

The study aims to examine the impact of changes in policy variables namely, monetary aggregate (M1), exchange rate and interest rate on two monetary goal variables, namely output and price level in Fiji from 1970 to 2006 by applying the procedures of variance decomposition and impulse response functions. We conclude that the money channel is the most effective channel of transmission mechanism among the three channels.

Stylised features of consumer price setting behaviour in Portugal: 1992–2001

This paper identifies the empirical stylized features of consumer price setting behavior in Portugal using two micro-datasets underlying the consumer price index. The main conclusions are: one in every four prices change each month; there is a considerable degree of heterogeneity in price setting practices; prices of goods change more often than prices of services; price reductions are common, as they account to around 40% of total price changes; price changes are, in general, sizeable; finally, the price setting patterns seem to depend on the level of inflation as well as on the type of outlet.

Does the Law of One Price Hold within the EU? A Panel Analysis

This paper empirically tests the law of one price by applying unit root tests to three panels consisting of data on 90 consumer price indices for the EU-25, the EU-15 and the 10 new EU member countries that joined the EU in 2004. The four major findings of this paper are: (1) panel unit root tests find evidence of price convergence for about 70% of all product groups, (2) the results are sensitive to the choice of the numeraire country implying that any conclusions must be based on all bilateral combinations, (3) the average half life across all product groups is 2.0 years, (4) the overall evidence for the law of one price is weaker in the 10 new EU member countries than in the EU-15.

Estate taxation with warm-glow altruism

This article examines the properties of the optimal fiscal policy in an economy with warm-glow altruism (utility interdependence) and heterogeneous individuals. We propose a new efficiency concept, D-efficiency, that considers an implicit constraint in the act of giving: Donors cannot bequeath to donees more than their existing resources. Considering this constraint, we show that the market equilibrium is not socially efficient. The efficient level of bequest transfers can be implemented by the market with estate and labor-income subsidies and a capital-income tax. In the absence of lump-sum taxation, the government faces a trade-off between minimizing distortions and eliminating external effects. The implied tax policy differs from Pigovian taxation since the government’s ability to correct the external effects is limited. Finally, we show that the efficiency-equity trade-off does not affect the qualitative features of the optimal distortionary fiscal policy.