The relationship between stock prices and exchange rates in South Africa and Nigeria: structural breaks analysis

The relationship between stock prices and exchange rates has continued to generate interest from both the academia and financial industry players for many years. This study conducts an empirical investigation into the relationship between stock prices and exchange rates for the two largest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa – South Africa and Nigeria. Our methodology accounts for structural breaks in the data and the long-run relationship between stock and foreign exchange markets. The results of multivariate causality tests with structural breaks showed that causality runs from exchange rates to domestic stock prices in Nigeria (flow channel) while in South Africa, no causality exists between domestic stock prices and exchange rates. The results also reveal that there is causality from the London stock market to both countries’ stock markets, thus showing that international stock markets are driving both the Nigerian and South African stock markets.     

An empirical examination of long-run purchasing power parity using cointegration techniques

This paper presents an empirical analysis of long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) for five major exchange rates using recently developed econometric techniques on the cointegration of economic time series. Our empirical results are extremely unfavourable to the PPP hypothesis as a long-run equilibrium condition, even with an allowance made for measurement error and/or tranportation costs. In particular, we are unable to reject the hypothesis of non-cointegration of the exchange rate and relative prices for any of the countries concerned. Far from finding a stable, long-run proportionality between exchange rates and relative prices, our results therefore suggest that they tend to drift apart without bound.     

Foreign exchange market interventions and the $–¥ exchange rate in the long run

This article examines whether foreign exchange market interventions conducted by the Bank of Japan are important for the dollar–yen exchange rate in the long run. We rely on a re-examination of the empirical performance of a monetary exchange rate model. This is basically not a new topic; however, we focus on two new questions. First, does the consideration of periods of massive interventions in the foreign exchange market uncover a potential long-run relationship between the exchange rate and its fundamentals? Second, do Forex interventions support the adjustment towards a long-run equilibrium value? Our results suggest that taking periods of interventions into account within a monetary model does improve the goodness of fit of an identified long-run relationship to a significant degree. Furthermore, Forex interventions increase the speed of adjustment towards long-run equilibrium in some periods, particularly in periods of coordinated forex interventions. Our results indicate that only coordinated interventions seem to stabilize the dollar–yen exchange rate in a long-run perspective.     

Foreign Exchange Controls and the Parallel Market Premium

This paper studies the relationship between the official and parallel exchange rates, using cointegration, Granger causality, and reduced form methods on data from three Caribbean countries, Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad & Tobago, for the period 1985–93. Where the central bank follows a passive policy of infrequent and large adjustments to the official rate, changes in the official rate Granger causes changes in the parallel rate, and larger disparities prevail between the two rates. Foreign exchange controls, expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, and changes of government mostly have a positive effect on the parallel market premium, with foreign exchange controls exerting the strongest impact.     

Equilibrium and efficiency of exchange rates in a silver-based monetary system—the cases of India and Iran

This paper examines the issue of equilibrium and efficiency of exchange rates in a silver-based monetary system during nineteenth century India and Iran. The results based on co-integration tests indicate a reliable long-run relationship between the metallic value and the exchange value of currencies in a silver-based monetary standard. Our results also validate the necessary and sufficient conditions of the efficient market hypothesis.     

An empirical examination of long-run purchasing power parity as theory of international commodity arbitrage

An empirical analysis of long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) as a theory of international commodity arbitrage between UK and US prices and the sterling/US dollar exchange rate for the period 1975–1980 is presented. Econometric techniques concerning the cointegration of economic time series are applied to a sample of 35 manufactured commodities which in 1977 constituted approximately a quarter of the net output of all manufacturing industry in Great Britain. Our results are extremely unfavourable to the PPP hypothesis as a stable long-run proportionality between exchange rates and disaggregated prices.     

人民币汇率与股价动态相关性的研究——基于次贷危机前后的比较分析

本文基于2005年8月至2010年6月的月度数据,利用协整检验和向量误差修正模型研究了次贷危机发生前后人民币名义有效汇率与股票价格之间的联动关系。实证结果表明,次贷危机发生前中国股市与汇率之间存在正向的长期均衡关系,且两者之间在长期互为因果关系;在次贷危机发生后两者之间则是反向的长期均衡关系,股价波动在长期内是人民币名义有效汇率变动的单向Granger原因。最后本文基于人民币名义有效汇率的计算方法及其影响因素,利用资产组合平衡模型、国际贸易等相关理论对实证结果进行了分析。     

Time-varying exchange rate exposure and exchange rate risk pricing in the Canadian Equity Market

This paper aims to extend the existing literature on foreign exchange rate risk pricing. Unlike the existing studies on Canada, we use six alternative bilateral and one multilateral exchange rate proxies. Furthermore, using both a two-factor and a three-factor capital asset pricing model (CAPM), we test for the presence of a long-run relationship among exchange rate risk pricing, herding behavior, term structure and the interest rate. The estimated results based on both the ordinary least squares (OLS) and generalized least squares (GLS) estimation techniques confirm that exchange rate risk in the Canadian equity market is priced and that the pricing of this risk is time-varying. This result holds for all seven exchange rate proxies. Our empirical analysis also suggests the presence of a long-run relationship among exchange rate risk pricing, herding behavior, term structure and the interest rate. This relationship is found to be insensitive to variations in the world market return.     

中国国情下的保险费率监管模式选择及影响分析--来自车险市场的经验证据

我国保险监管朝着“放开前端、管住后端”的模式发展,保险费率市场化改革的呼声始终较高。文章以财险市场中市场份额最大的车险为研究对象,基于2001－2014年样本分析了费率市场化与费率水平合理性之间的关系。研究发现,我国车险市场的实际费率水平明显低于理论费率;费率监管的严格程度的确会影响费率水平的合理性,其中适度监管模式下的费率水平最为合理。文章进一步深入探究了费率水平合理性对偿付能力的影响机制,发现费率差异的波动性会通过净利润而间接影响偿付能力。费率差异的波动性越小,净利润越高,偿付能力越强,因此应慎重选择费率监管制度。文章建议我国保险市场应采用适度监管的费率制度,完全放开的费率市场化略显激进,不适合当前国情。这样不仅能使费率水平更加合理,还不会威胁保险公司的偿付能力,从而使保险市场更加健康稳步的发展。     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE BLACK MARKET AND OFFICIAL EXCHANGE RATES: AN EXAMINATION OF LONG-RUN DYNAMICS IN INDIA

This study is the first to use Johansen's cointegration approach for India in the analysis of the long‐term dynamics between the black and official exchange rates for the period 1953–1993. The study also estimates the long‐run elasticity of the official rate with respect to the black market rate. As monthly data over 40 years are used, and a more robust methodology is employed, the results are likely to be more reliable as compared with the earlier work on India. The results of our study suggest that while there is a long‐term relationship between the two rates, the direction of causality is from the black rate to the official exchange rate. This is plausible in the Indian context where policy has generally lagged behind events in the black market. The hypothesis of a constant black market premium is rejected, implying that there is a mismatch between the percentage change in the official exchange rate and the percentage change in the black market rate.     

Understanding Exchange Rate Movements during the 2008 Financial Crisis

During the 2008 financial crisis, many advanced economies, whose banking systems suffered significant capital losses, experienced large and rapid exchange rate depreciations followed by prolonged and gradual appreciation in subsequent periods. In order to understand one possible explanation of these observed exchange rate movements, we develop a simple model of a highly leveraged banking sector in which banks obtain part of their funding from abroad. A fall in bank net worth leads to foreign lenders demanding a higher risk premium on credit supplied to domestic banks. This higher risk premium can be met if the exchange rate experiences an appreciation along the adjustment path, since this raises the value of the bank's earnings in terms of the foreign currency for every period that the foreign risk premium is elevated. In order for the exchange rate to appreciate by a large amount along the adjustment path, it must initially become undervalued – relative to its long-run level – so that in equilibrium the market is willing to bid up its value in subsequent periods. This thus gives rise to the large initial depreciation of the exchange rate followed by its prolonged and gradual appreciation.     

Demand for money in Bangladesh: a cointegration analysis

The aim of this study is to estimate the demand for real broad (M2) money in Bangladesh using the most recently developed autoregressive distributed lag approach to cointegration analyses. The empirical results show that there is a unique cointegrated and stable long-run relationship among real per capita broad money demand, real per capita income, domestic interest rates and unofficial exchange rate (UM) premiums which act as a surrogate for foreign interest rates. With money as the dependent variable, the results show that the income and interest elasticities are positive while the UM premium elasticity is negative. These results suggest that distortions in the financial and foreign exchange markets should be reduced in order to increase financial saving or monetary accumulation. Our results also reveal that the demand for money in Bangladesh is stable despite the changes in financial and exchange rate policies between 1975 and 1995.     

Real exchange rates and real interest rates once again: a multivariate panel cointegration analysis

This paper employs multivariate panel cointegration techniques to re-examine the empirical relationship between bilateral real exchange rates and real interest rates. The results from a panel of 1470 quarterly observations on Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and USA over the period 1977 to 1994 indicate the absence of any long-run relationship between the two variables.     

Fractionalization and long-run economic growth: webs and direction of association between the economic and the social -- South Africa as a time series case study

In this paper it is considered that the relationship between nominal exchange rate and prices depends on the nature of the shocks impacting the economy. In order to identify the sources of nominal exchange rate and relative price fluctuations we impose long-run restrictions on the dynamics of these variables through a 2-variable and 3-variable SVAR, respectively. This methodology is applied to data on the Spanish economy and find that supply and real demand shocks move nominal exchange rates and relative prices in opposite directions. Nominal shocks, however, move both variables in the same direction. Thus, in this case, only under nominal shocks may exchange rate depreciations fuel inflation.     

中国债券市场的可预测性和分割性研究

本文研究了中国债券市场综合收益、长短期债券收益差异、银行间市场和交易所市场收益差异的样本内和样本外可预测性。本文选取宏观、中观（市场）、微观3个层面27个变量以及利用主成分分析法生成6个主成分变量作为预测变量,发现中国债券市场综合收益率在剥离了特殊品种债券之后具有一定的样本内和样本外可预测性。基于主成分提取的预测变量的预测能力更强,部分宏观经济指标和市场层面指标都可以预测债市风险溢价。基于27个指标提取的第一主成分对期限溢价、场所溢价在样本内均有较强的预测能力,而样本外可预测性较差。本文结论表明,我国债券市场容易受到宏观经济影响,银行间市场和交易所市场在市场功能上并没有很大的差异,两个市场的分割随着债券市场的波动而加剧。     

Choice of currency basket weights and its implications on trade balance

This paper seeks to find an optimal choice of currency basket weights for emerging economies that peg their currencies to a currency basket, and to examine the long-run relationship between the real exchange rates of a group of trading partners. A general equilibrium model is set up to establish an optimal set of currency basket weights, coupled with the choice of fiscal policy, to simultaneously stabilize trade balance and aggregate price level of an economy. This optimal set of weights is a weighted average of two sets of weights; each targets at one policy goal (stabilizing either balance of trade or aggregate price level) at a time. Empirical studies including vector autoregression (VAR) analysis and cointegration analysis on the long-run relationship between the Thai baht and the real exchange rates of its major trading partners are presented.     

Extracting shadow exchange rates and foreign exchange premia during currency crises: an example from Egypt

We utilize high-frequency data and a novel synchronous trade-matching algorithm to show that shadow exchange rates could be estimated from price spreads between depositary receipts and their underlying local stocks using an example of the recent Egyptian currency crisis. These shadow rates reflect the local black market foreign exchange rates in addition to a foreign exchange premium, which we attribute to the cost of expatriating capital during currency and capital control periods.     

Black and official exchange rates in Morocco: an analysis of their long-run behaviour and short-run dynamics (1974–1992)

Using Vector Error-Correction (VEC) model estimation on monthly data from Morocco for the period January 1974 to December 1992, this article tests the hypothesis that there is a long-run stable relationship between the official and the black-market exchange rates for US dollars. We also examine the short-run dynamics in the relationship between the two markets. The econometric results indicate that the two exchange rates are cointegrated. Furthermore, we reject weak exogeneity in the case of the official exchange rate, but fail to reject it in the case of the black-market rate. Granger causality tests show that the black-market rate causes the official exchange rate. The results seem to support the efficiency hypothesis, suggesting that participants in the black-market are able to anticipate changes in the official exchange rate. The findings also suggest that Morocco's decision (in January 1993) to introduce only current account convertibility and keep controls on capital accounts was wise.     

Smuggling, non‐fundamental uncertainty, and parallel market exchange rate volatility

Abstract.  We explore a model where smuggling and a parallel currency market arise, owing to government restrictions that prevent agents from legally holding foreign exchange. Despite such restrictions, agents are able to diversify their savings, holding both domestic and parallel foreign cash, basing their portfolio allocation on current and prospective parallel exchange rates. We attribute movements in parallel rates to non‐fundamental uncertainty. The model generates equilibria with both positive and negative parallel premia and correlations between illegal trade and the premium. The model has the novel implication that currency speculation drives smuggling, affecting real activities in all sectors of the economy. JEL classification: F31     

Central Bank's interventions and the Fisher hypothesis: a threshold cointegration investigation

The long-run relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation is examined, allowing for structural breaks and asymmetric mean reversion. From a Threshold AutoRegressive (TAR) test applied to the residuals of the cointegration relationship (while allowing for both a break in the mean of the long-run equation and a smooth regime-transition), there is strong evidence for non-linear mean reversion properties for the real interest rates of the US Treasury Bill market. This suggests asymmetric changes to inflation shocks in the Central Bank's reaction function. The existence of different regimes is consistent with some interpretations of the monetary policies run by the Fed, such as credibility and opportunism.