Corporate income tax and futures hedging

Our research is motivated by the Corn Products vs. Arkansas Best Supreme Court decisions that pitched the controversy of the tax treatment of gains and losses from futures hedging. The use of futures contracts as risk management tools depends on the tax code. In this paper we address complications in the current tax code that allow for asymmetric offset: Ordinary losses can be applied against capital gains; however, capital losses cannot by applied against ordinary gains. Also we consider the issue of tax loss carryover. We investigate the optimal hedge ratios under these scenarios analytically where possible, and numerically where necessary. Michael Metz is an independent commodity market consultant.     

International tenders and futures hedging

This paper examines the optimal bidding and hedging decisions of a risk‐averse firm that takes part in an international tender. The firm faces multiple sources of uncertainty: exchange rate risk, risk of an unsuccessful tender, and business risk. The firm is allowed to trade unbiased currency futures contracts to imperfectly hedge its contingent foreign exchange risk exposure. We show that the firm shorts less (more) of the unbiased futures contracts when its marginal utility function is convex (concave) as compared with the case that the marginal utility function is linear. We further show that the curvature of the marginal utility function plays a decisive role in determining the impact of currency futures hedging on the firm's bidding behavior. Sufficient conditions that ensure the firm bids more or less aggressively than in the case without hedging opportunities are derived. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tax‐loss carryforward and futures hedging

Our research is motivated by the Corn Products vs Arkansas Best Supreme court decisions that brought on the controversy of the tax treatment of gains and losses from futures hedging. The usefulness of a futures contract as risk management tool depends on the tax code. In this paper we address implications of capital treatment of futures positions (disallowing offset for tax purposes) when tax‐loss carryover is allowed. Our analysis utilizes a two‐period model to capture the inter‐temporal effects. We investigate the optimal hedge ratios under these scenarios analytically where possible, and numerically where necessary. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tax asymmetry and futures hedging under liquidity constraints

This paper examines the optimal futures hedging decision of a firm facing uncertain income that is subject to asymmetric taxation with no loss‐offset provisions. All futures contracts are marked to market and require interim cash settlement of gains and losses. The firm is liquidity constrained in that it is forced to prematurely close its futures position on which the interim loss incurred exceeds a threshold level. The liquidity risk created by the interim funding requirement of a futures hedge is shown to proffer the firm perverse incentives, thereby making an under‐hedge optimal. This under‐hedging result holds irrespective of whether the firm is risk neutral or risk averse. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Production and hedging in futures markets with multiple delivery specifications

This paper examines the behavior of the competitive firm under price uncertainty. To hedge the price risk, the firm trades unbiased commodity futures contracts with multiple delivery specifications from which delivery risk prevails. We show that the firm optimally produces less in the presence than in the absence of the delivery risk. We show further that the concept of expectation dependence that describes how the delivery risk is correlated with the random spot price plays a pivotal role in determining the firm’s optimal futures position. Specifically, an under-hedge is optimal if the random spot price is positively expectation dependent on the delivery risk. The firm’s optimal futures position becomes indeterminate if the random spot price is negatively expectation dependent on the delivery risk.     

Risk-return measures of hedging effectiveness: The case of multiple cash and futures markets

In this article we consider the measure of hedging effectiveness proposed by Howard and D' Antonio (HD) when there are multiple cash and futures markets. It is found that the HD measure can be decomposed into two components: one solely determined by the futures market conditions, the other affected by both cash and futures markets as well as the hedger's cash portfolio. We then analyze the impacts of optimal cash portfolios on the HD measure. Although the Ederington hedging effectiveness is bounded over all cash portfolios, the conclusion does not apply to the HD measure.     

Crack spread hedging: accounting for time‐varying volatility spillovers in the energy futures markets

Crude oil, heating oil, and unleaded gasoline futures contracts are simultaneously analysed for their effectiveness in reducing price volatility for an energy trader. A conceptual model is developed for a trader hedging the ‘crack spread’. Various hedge ratio estimation techniques are compared to a Multivariate GARCH model that directly incorporates the time to maturity effect often found in futures markets. Modelling of the time‐variation in hedge ratios via the Multivariate GARCH methodology, and thus taking into account volatility spillovers between markets is shown to result in significant reductions in uncertainty even while accounting for trading costs. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

公共财政框架下政府审计的拓展与政府会计的完善

政府审计是加强预算管理的一个重要工具。中国在建立公共财政的过程中，进行了一系列预算管理制度的改革，政府审计必须适应现行的预算管理制度，在审计内容上、方法上积极拓展。本文主要论述了当前公共财政框架下政府审计需要拓展的方面。另外，为保证预算管理制度改革顺利实施，政府会计等其他制度建设也需相应追行改革和完善。     

Model risk and option hedging

This paper presents a theoretical approach to option hedging and valuation when traders are facing model risk. Model risk is restrictively defined as the financial risk resulting from the choice of an approximating model to proxy for the true but ex-ante unknown state space of the underlying security process. A generalized model is defined for estimating the appropriate volatility markup, which is dependent on the noisiness of the volatility estimate over time. Delta neutral hedge portfolios are created using simulated S&P 500 option prices to demonstrate that using a volatility markup in the traditional binomial model reduces model risk.     

Property tax revaluation and tax levy growth

Jurisdiction-wide property revaluation, like many administrative reforms, may have unintended consequences. This paper examines one such potential consequence. By pooling 18-year time series for each of 39 Massachusetts cities (17 of which revalued) and 270 Massachusetts towns (202 of which revalued), we examine the hypothesis that politicians take advantage of the confusion generated by revaluation and raise property taxes by more than they otherwise would have. We observe such a response in cities but not in towns and attribute this difference to differences in their governmental structures.     

Managerial hedging ability and firm risk

Modern portfolio theory suggests that undiversified executives would choose to diversify their significant holdings of their firm??s stock if the opportunity was available. Recent work suggests that managerial hedging is more prevalent than in years past as more innovative hedging instruments have become available to executives. Typically, unrestricted shares are used in these hedging transactions whereas restricted shares are not. In this paper, I examine whether a CEO??s composition of firm stockholdings between restricted and unrestricted shares impacts the level of risk undertaken by the firm. I document a negative and statistically significant relationship between firm risk and the proportion of CEO total shareholdings that are unrestricted and this negative relationship holds for alternative measures of firm risk. This result supports the notion that the composition of a CEO??s portfolio of firm stock between restricted and unrestricted shares is a significant determinant of firm risk.     

Multi-step barrier products and static hedging

This paper examines multi-step barrier options with an arbitrary payoff function using extended static hedging methods. Although there have been studies using extended reflection principles to obtain joint distribution functions for barrier options with complex barrier conditions, and static hedging methods to evaluate limited barrier options with well-known payoff functions, we obtain an explicit expression of barrier option price which has a general payoff function under the Black–Scholes framework assumption. The explicit multi-step barrier options prices we discuss in this paper are not only useful in that they can handle different levels and time steps barrier and all types of payoff functions, but can also extend to pricing of barrier options under finite discrete jump–diffusion models with a simple barrier. In the last part, we supplement the theory with numerical examples of various multi-step barrier options under the Black–Scholes or discrete jump–diffusion model for comparison purposes.     

Corporate hedging and input price risk

Input price variability is an important source of risk for corporations that process raw commodities. Models of optimal input hedging are developed in this paper based on the maximization of managerial expected utility. The relationship between hedging strategies and output decisions is examined to assess the impact of the ability to set output prices on futures market participation. As a firm's ability to set output prices diminishes in the short run, input futures positions increase although the optimal hedge ratio may either increase or decrease. For a perfectly competitive firm, however, shifts in output price caused by input price changes provide a natural cash market hedge of input price risk and reduce the firm's optimal input futures position.     

Propensity for hedging and ambiguity aversion

We study ambiguity aversion by introducing some new notions of propensity for hedging that are less general than convexity of preferences. We therefore characterize the corresponding properties of the capacity and Choquet functional, and link them with actual observed behaviors under uncertainty (Fox et al., 1996; Tversky and Wakker, 1995).     

Swap pricing and hedging of general DCFs

This paper shows that under payoff and/or interest rate uncertainty the splitting up of discounted cash flows (DCFs) into period addenda not only permits to quantify the contribution of each period to the total (random) DCF, but also allows us to price it and hedge the its risk. The contribution effect was already well known, while the pricing and hedging issue is new in this context. We first notice that—through the decomposition—each cash flow process can be interpreted as a swap one. We then resort to the risk-neutral pricing and hedging technique as applied to (exotic) swaps.     

Operational hedging against adverse circumstances

This paper investigates operational hedging against severe disruptions to normal operations. It offers a new method to evaluate the extent that operations policy serves as a hedge against adverse circumstances. We apply the proposed method to explore how supply chain characteristics affect the responses of airlines to the acute demand fall off after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Results indicate that operational hedging vehicles (fleet standardization, high-fleet utilization, an aircraft ownership policy rather than leasing, and international operations) are more powerful in protecting firms than using financial instruments. The study contributes in guiding managers as to how operations policy can serve as an imperative factor in mitigating exposures to low-end performance levels.     

Local institutional shareholders and corporate hedging policies

This paper examines the effectiveness of monitoring function from institutional investors on corporate hedging strategy in Taiwan over the period from 2005 to 2012. The empirical results show that institutional investors are effective monitors of corporate risk management to enhance the probability and extent of hedging. In addition, the monitoring function from institutional investors is effective for mitigating the risk-shifting problem of high leveraged firms. Moreover, local institutional investors play more important role in monitoring distressed firm's magnitude of hedging than foreign institutional investors. These results are robust to the consideration of endogeneity, selection bias, and industrial difference. This is the first empirical evidence in the literature regarding the monitoring effect of institutional investors on risk management strategy from the angle of monitoring costs.     

Fund raiser futures

Fund raisers must prefigure the philanthropic temperament of our future society. From there, they must prepare new attitudes, methodologies and technologies to cultivate the donor, receive the gift and maintain the relationship.     

International trade and hedging in economies in transition

This paper develops a general equilibrium framework to analyze risk management policies in economies in transition. By cross-hedging against real exchange rate risk exposures, these economies can increase their gains from international trade. We suggest that countries with emerging forward markets can gradually introduce the risk sharing markets, as limiting resources may prevent them from introducing complete hedging markets in the first place. Thus the growing demand for risk management instruments can be gradually met and it would be welfare enhancing. Economies in transition benefit when hedging devices are offered by financial markets, irrespective of whether the hedging instruments are de facto perfect or not.