The evolution of trading activity in Asian foreign exchange markets

We exploit previously unpublished data on foreign exchange turnover to analyse the institutional setting in which the currencies of non-Japan Asia are traded. Volumes grew rapidly between 2004 and 2007 and the diversity of market participants increased. Nevertheless, liquidity is undermined by foreign exchange controls. For Asian currencies other than JPY, HKD and SGD, non-residents account for a relatively small share of activity and FX swap markets are still in their infancy. Offshore non-deliverable markets have developed in response to controls, causing segmentation in trading activity. Furthermore, Herstatt risk remains high in Asian foreign exchange markets.     

Sovereign default, interest rates and political uncertainty in emerging markets

A large body of the empirical literature shows that high turnover rates/length of tenure of policymakers and the degree of conflict within a country affects sovereign spreads, debt and default rates. We help to rationalize such claims by including these political features in a dynamic stochastic small open economy model of sovereign debt and default. In this way we offer a complementary approach to the econometric analyses in the literature. Consistent with the data, the quantitative analysis shows that politically unstable and more polarized economies experience higher default rates and larger level and volatility of sovereign interest rate spreads.     

The impact of foreign interest rates on the economy: The role of the exchange rate regime

It is often argued that many economies are affected by conditions in foreign countries. This paper explores the connection between interest rates in major industrial countries and annual real output growth in other countries. The results show that high foreign interest rates have a contractionary effect on annual real GDP growth in the domestic economy, but that this effect is centered on countries with fixed exchange rates. The paper then examines the potential channels through which major-country interest rates affect other economies. The effect of foreign interest rates on domestic interest rates is the most likely channel when compared with other possibilities, such as a trade effect.     

Returns on ADRs and arbitrage in emerging markets

In this paper we compare the distributions of ADR returns and the returns of the locally traded shares between Chile and Argentina. This comparison is interesting because both countries are emerging economies with a similar free market orientation and the trading hours in both countries virtually coincide with the trading hours in New York. Argentina and Chile differ, however, in two important aspects: During our sample period: (1) The Argentinean market was completely under a fixed-exchange rate system, while Chile maintained a flexible exchange rate regime; and (2) Argentina did not impose any restrictions on foreign investments, while Chile did. We find that the return distributions of the Chilean ADRs are significantly different from the distributions of the returns on the respective underlying Chilean shares. While the mean returns are the same, the return's S.D. are significantly different. In contrast, the hypothesis that the distributions of the returns on the Argentinean ADRs and the returns on their respective underlying shares are the same cannot be rejected. We then use a threshold model to estimate the transaction costs of trading the ADRs and the locally traded shares. We find that the transaction costs that must be added to the returns spread before arbitrage is possible were between 100 and 200 basis points for Chilean ADRs. It was between 66 and 165 basis points for the Argentinean ADRs. The daily return spread reversion caused by arbitrage activities was estimated to be approximately 30% for Chilean ADRs and 40% for Argentinean ADRs. Finally, we cannot reject the hypothesis that low liquidity was a major factor in the cost difference between the two countries.     

Linkages in the term structure of interest rates across sovereign bond markets

This paper investigates the linkages in the sovereign bond yields across different maturity spectrums among both developed and Asian countries. Term structure of interest rate is estimated using the Dynamic Nelson Siegel model and Kalman filter. The degrees of integration and transmission of shocks from one country to another are measured using forecast error variance decomposition in the generalized vector autoregression (VAR) model. The level factor showed higher spillover index across the countries. Regional influence is found to be higher in slope and curvature factors among the Asian countries. The linkages are high during periods of crisis.     

Real-time price discovery in global stock, bond and foreign exchange markets

Using a unique high-frequency futures dataset, we characterize the response of U.S., German and British stock, bond and foreign exchange markets to real-time U.S. macroeconomic news. We find that news produces conditional mean jumps; hence high-frequency stock, bond and exchange rate dynamics are linked to fundamentals. Equity markets, moreover, react differently to news depending on the stage of the business cycle, which explains the low correlation between stock and bond returns when averaged over the cycle. Hence our results qualify earlier work suggesting that bond markets react most strongly to macroeconomic news; in particular, when conditioning on the state of the economy, the equity and foreign exchange markets appear equally responsive. Finally, we also document important contemporaneous links across all markets and countries, even after controlling for the effects of macroeconomic news.     

外汇汇率的相关性及波动性研究

本文基于相关性分析和GARCH族模型,通过对2002年7月21日到2009年7月21日的美元、欧元和日元兑人民币的日汇率数据的实证研究,分析了我国汇率制度改革以后汇率市场的相关关系变化情况,然后运用GARCH类模型对美元、欧元和日元兑人民币的汇率波动性进行了对比研究,最后总结得出相关结论。     

Inflation,currency exchange rates,and the international securities markets

A time-state-preference model of an efficient and complete international financial market is employed to investigate the conditions under which the international Fisher Effect will hold, and the forward currency exchange rate will be an unbiased estimate of the future spot rate. The presence of stochastic inflation within countries in the fiat-currency prices of real goods will destroy both relationships, even in the absence of any institutional imperfections or trading barriers. Similarly, expected inflation rate differentials across countries will not coincide with spot-versus-forward currency exchange rate differentials.