Strategies that fit emerging markets

It's no easy task to identify strategies for entering new international markets or to decide which countries to do business with. Many firms simply go with what they know-and fall far short of their goals. Part of the problem is that emerging markets have "institutional voids": They lack specialized intermediaries, regulatory systems, and contract-enforcing methods. These gaps have made it difficult for multinationals to succeed in developing nations; thus, many companies have resisted investing there. That may be a mistake. If Western companies don't come up with good strategies for engaging with emerging markets, they are unlikely to remain competitive. Many firms choose their markets and strategies for the wrong reasons, relying on everything from senior managers' gut feelings to the behaviors of rivals. Corporations also depend on composite indexes for help making decisions. But these analyses can be misleading; they don't account for vital information about the soft infrastructures in developing nations. A better approach is to understand institutional variations between countries. The best way to do this, the authors have found, is by using the five contexts framework. The five contexts are a country's political and social systems, its degree of openness, its product markets, its labor markets, and its capital markets. By asking a series of questions that pertain to each ofthe five areas, executives can map the institutional contexts of any nation. When companies match their strategies to each country's contexts, they can take advantage of a location's unique strengths. But first firms should weigh the benefits against the costs. If they find that the risks of adaptation are too great, they should try to change the contexts in which they operate or simply stay away.     

新兴市场资本流动

文章指出,新兴市场资本流入呈现较大波动性将成未来态势,预计其2014年和2015年流人量会较2013年下降。就新兴市场资本流入的影响因素,文章分析了全球经济增长减弱的负面影响,认为新兴资本市场吸引力前景不明且出现地区分化,发达经济体货币政策预期变化和地缘政治紧张两大下行风险上升。文章探讨了G3货币政策预期变化对新兴市场资本流动的影响,并预测了亚洲、欧洲、拉美、非洲和中东等各新兴市场地区资本流动状况。     

From Minority Games to real markets

We address the question of market efficiency using the Minority Game (MG) model. First we show that removing unrealistic features of the MG leads to models which reproduce a scaling behaviour close to what is observed in real markets. In particular we find that (i) fat tails and clustered volatility arise at the phase transition point and that (ii) the crossover to random walk behaviour of prices is a finite-size effect. This, on one hand, suggests that markets operate close to criticality, where the market is marginally efficient. On the other it allows one to measure the distance from criticality of real markets, using cross-over times. The artificial market described by the MG is then studied as an ecosystem with different species of traders. This clarifies the nature of the interaction and the particular role played by the various populations.     

寻找合适的上市地

作为一年一度的北京科博会的重要活动，“2015中国金融论坛”前不久在北京举办，其中分论坛围绕着“等IPO还是投向新三板？企业如何选择适合上市地”这一主题请专家发表看法。     

美元强势仍将延续外汇市场走势分化

2014年主要经济体复苏进程和货币政策分化,下半年以来,国际外汇市场货币走势分化,市场交易量持续上升,波动性加大。文章基于2014年以来国际外汇市场走势及其影响因素的分析,展望国际外汇市场当前分化走势的延续性。     

A builder's guide to agent-based financial markets

This paper is intended to guide researchers interested in building their own agent-based financial markets. Key design questions are outlined, along with some of the major controversies about which directions to take.     

Unsecured credit markets are not insurance markets

We study the extent to which unsecured credit markets have altered the transmission of increased income risk to consumption variability over the past several decades. We find that unsecured credit markets pass through increased income risk to consumption, irrespective of bankruptcy policy and the information possessed by lenders. If risk sharing has indeed improved over this period, the reasons do not therefore lie in the unsecured credit market.     

The interrelatedness of global equity markets, money markets, and foreign exchange markets

This article investigates different aspects of global financial markets, specifically relationships among equity markets, money markets, and foreign exchange markets across countries. To represent the three major financial markets of the world, Japan is the proxy for Asia, Germany is the proxy for Europe, and the United States is the proxy for North America. Strong evidence exists that international money markets and international equity markets are becoming increasingly integrated over time. This article incorporates foreign exchange values as partial determinants of equity returns and money market returns and investigates the interactions among these three asset markets from a global perspective.     

美元和日元外国债券市场与离岸债券市场比较研究

债券市场对外开放,对于促进人民币跨境使用具有重要意义。文章通过对美元和日元外国债券市场和离岸债券市场的比较研究,发现由于管制落差的存在,离岸债券市场发展明显快于外国债券市场,同时,离岸债券市场发展对在岸的外国债券市场发展具有明显的促进作用。文章指出,应通过减少对在岸外国债券市场的管制、有效利用香港等离岸人民币债券市场的创新优势等手段,进一步促进我国债券市场的对外开放效率和健康发展。     

Flipping markets to virtue with qui tam and restorative justice

Contemporary economies are characterised by a regulatory capitalism in which both markets and regulation extend their sway. Freer markets with more rules nurture markets in vice that game regulation. Tax avoidance and evasion are used to illustrate these dynamics. Yet freer markets with more rules also engender markets in compliance services that can be virtuous and more dominant (more demanded) than markets in vice. As a result of that dominance, firms and individuals often comply at levels that seem economically irrational virtue. To hold corporations to compliance through markets in virtue requires regulation with toughened enforcement capabilities for drawing out insider information about looming problems. Qui tam is suggested as one option. This option can be complemented with a more deliberative approach, restorative justice. One reason to consider this package of hybrid private–public enforcement that knows no jurisdictional boundaries is that when fraud is globalised, firms organise their affairs so that fraud is off-shore from all state regulators with an interest in exercising jurisdiction against it.     

Extreme spillovers of VIX fear index to international equity markets

This study analyzes the impact of VIX spillovers on market activities during extreme market conditions in 42 international equity markets from 1998 to 2014. Specifically, tail cross-dependence suggests that a small change in VIX significantly influences global market activities during extreme market conditions. The impact of VIX is asymmetric, which is more pronounced in bearish, highly volatile, and low trading volume markets. Moreover, VIX spillovers exhibit a stronger impact on returns in developed markets and on volatility in emerging markets. In terms of geographical location, the impact of VIX spillovers is more pronounced on returns in Europe and on volatility in Latin America. These findings indicate that international investors can potentially benefit from international portfolio diversification and can serve as useful guidance to policymakers in designing appropriate policies.

     

An alternative approach to evaluating the agreement between financial markets

This research investigates that the price relationship between a stock index and its associated nearby futures markets can be explained by the cost-of-carry model using the concordance correlation (CC) coefficient in the US financial markets. The main purpose of this research is to confirm that the CC coefficient is an appropriate methodology to determine ex post arbitrage opportunities and to maximize ex ante arbitrage profits through the analysis of the price relationship derived from the cost-of-carry model. To increase the robustness of the results and to enable us to generalize our conclusions, this analysis is carried out in consideration of external uncertainty, including the marking-to-market procedure of futures contracts and the transaction cost on the stock index and its futures markets, under several assumptions related to the conditions of transactions. Examining transaction price data on the S&P 500 stock index and its futures markets shows that the CC coefficient gives a good result for ex ante arbitrage profits and is appropriate for analyzing the relationship between the observed stock index futures market price and its theoretical price derived from the cost-of-carry model.     

The reaction of asset markets to Swiss National Bank communication

In this paper we analyze high-frequency movements in Swiss asset markets in reaction to real-time communication by the Swiss National Bank. Our analysis of central bank communication encompasses monetary policy announcements, speeches and interviews. We examine the reactions of the currency market, the bond market and the stock exchange. The evidence suggests that speeches and interviews, along with monetary policy announcements, engender a significant price reaction. This paper sheds light on the relevance of communications other than monetary policy announcements.     

Limits to arbitrage and hedging: Evidence from commodity markets

We build an equilibrium model of commodity markets in which speculators are capital constrained, and commodity producers have hedging demands for commodity futures. Increases in producers' hedging demand or speculators' capital constraints increase hedging costs via price-pressure on futures. These in turn affect producers' equilibrium hedging and supply decision inducing a link between a financial friction in the futures market and the commodity spot prices. Consistent with the model, measures of producers' propensity to hedge forecasts futures returns and spot prices in oil and gas market data from 1979 to 2010. The component of the commodity futures risk premium associated with producer hedging demand rises when speculative activity reduces. We conclude that limits to financial arbitrage generate limits to hedging by producers, and affect equilibrium commodity supply and prices.     

The transmission of emerging market shocks to global equity markets

The paper analyzes whether, and to what extent, emerging market economies (EMEs) have systemic importance for global financial markets, above and beyond their influence during crises episodes. Using a novel database of exogenous economic and political shocks for 14 systematically relevant EMEs, we find that EME shocks not only have a statistically but also economically significant impact on global equity markets. The economic significance of EME shocks is in particular underlined by their remarkably persistent effects over time. Importantly, EMEs are found to influence global equity markets about just as much in “good” times as in “bad” times, though they tend to be stronger during crises or periods of financial turbulence. Finally, we detect a large degree of heterogeneity in the transmission of EME shocks to individual countries' equity markets, stressing the different degrees of financial exposure, which is relatively higher for European equity markets.     

Incomplete markets and incentives to set up an options exchange

Traditional analyses with incomplete markets take the securities that are traded as exogenous. In this paper we endogenize the market structure by considering incentives to introduce (costly) options exchanges which issue derivative securities. The method of financing the exchange is critical in determining whether the market structure is socially efficient. If the exchange can charge fees to all agents and make every agent's participation a necessary condition for establishing the exchange then the market structure chosen in equilibrium is efficient. However, if either of these conditions is not satisfied then an inefficient market structure may be chosen.We would like to thank the editor, Herakles Polemarchakis, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. Financial support from the NSF (Grant nos. SES-8813719 and SES-8720589 for the two authors respectively) is gratefully acknowledged.     

Strategies to fight low-cost rivals

Companies find it challenging and yet strangely reassuring to take on opponents whose strategies, strengths, and weaknesses resemble their own. Their obsession with familiar rivals, however, has blinded them to threats from disruptive, low-cost competitors. Successful price warriors, such as the German retailer Aldi, are changing the nature of competition by employing several tactics: focusing on just one or a few consumer segments, delivering the basic product or providing one benefit better than rivals do, and backing low prices with superefficient operations. Ignoring cutprice rivals is a mistake because they eventually force companies to vacate entire market segments. Price wars are not the answer, either: Slashing prices usually lowers profits for incumbents without driving the low-cost entrants out of business. Companies take various approaches to competing against cut-price players. Some differentiate their products--a strategy that works only in certain circumstances. Others launch low-cost businesses of their own, as many airlines did in the 1990s--a so-called dual strategy that succeeds only if companies can generate synergies between the existing businesses and the new ventures, as the financial service providers HSBC and ING did. Without synergies, corporations are better off trying to transform themselves into low-cost players, a difficult feat that Ryanair accomplished in the 1990s, or into solution providers. There will always be room for both low-cost and value-added players. How much room each will have depends not only on the industry and customers' preferences, but also on the strategies traditional businesses deploy.     

批发市场:拓展郊区银行卡受理市场的突破口

近年来,青岛市银行卡受理市场规模不断扩大,市区特约商户不断增多,终端机具数量也不断增加,而市区银行卡受理市场发展速度却开始放缓.与此形成鲜明对照的是,郊区各市(县)的银行卡受理市场规模偏小,建设严重滞后.根据2008年前5个月的统计,青岛市所辖5个县级市的银行卡交易笔数、清算笔数、清算金额的合计数分别只占全市总数的15.82%、14.46%和17.23%.由此凸显城乡银行卡受理市场之间的巨大差距.     

Consumption in incomplete markets

We develop a method to find approximate solutions, and their accuracy, to consumption–investment problems with isoelastic preferences and infinite horizon, in incomplete markets where state variables follow a multivariate diffusion. We construct upper and lower contractions; these are fictitious complete markets in which state variables are fully hedgeable, but their dynamics is distorted. Such contractions yield pointwise upper and lower bounds for both the value function and the optimal consumption of the original incomplete market, and their optimal policies are explicit in typical models. Approximate consumption–investment policies coincide with the optimal one if the market is complete or utility is logarithmic.