Causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance among electricity prices,crude oil prices,and yen–US dollar exchange rates in Japan

In this study, we test the Granger-causality-in-mean and Granger-causality-in-variance among electricity prices, crude oil prices, and yen-to-US-dollar exchange rates in Japan using a cross-correlation function approach. We find Granger-causality-in-mean from neither the exchange market nor the oil market to the power market; the same was true of Granger-causality-in-variance, although both the exchange rates and oil prices greatly influence power generation costs in Japan. We suspect the efficiency of this market is at play.     

Dynamic characteristics of the daily yen–dollar exchange rate

This paper explores various dynamic properties of daily data for the yen–dollar exchange rate. This empirical study shows that quantitative information articulated with technical trading acts as market-based indicators, thus contributing to the modelling of daily fluctuations in the exchange rate. Value-at-Risk analysis is also performed to demonstrate that allowing for data properties such as skewness is essential for representing the underlying volatility of the yen–dollar rate.     

News from the U.S. and Japan: Which moves the yen/dollar exchange rate?

Intra-daily movements in the yen/dollar exchange rate are examined in four non-overlapping segments within each business day from January 1980 to September 1985. The results indicate that the dollar tended to appreciate in the New York segment and depreciate in the European segment. In three of the four subsamples considered, the Tokyo segment made virtually no contribution to annual yen/dollar rate movements. The volatility of the exchange rate also differed across markets. Finally, in examining the relative effects of news from the U.S. and Japan explicitly, U.S. money announcement surprises had the most consistent effects.     

Is the relationship between prices and exchange rates homogeneous?

Empirical tests of purchasing power parity (PPP) are implicitly based on the conditions of symmetry and proportionality of the price coefficients. We investigate a separate condition, which we term homogeneity. Specifically, while there may be factors that drive a wedge between prices and exchange rates, when these factors are held constant we would expect a change in exchange rates to be associated with a proportional, or homogeneous, change in prices. To test for the existence of homogeneity in prices, we conduct two experiments. First, we apply a time-varying-coefficient procedure to nine euro-area countries as well as the euro area as a whole during the (monthly) sample period, 1999:M1 to 2011:M3. Second we apply the same procedure to the same group of countries, plus Canada, Japan and Mexico, over the longer period, 1957:M4 to 2011:M3. We find that averages of the price coefficients, corrected for specification biases, are uniformly homogeneous in the long run, providing strong support for PPP.     

Government spending,interest rates,prices, and budget deficits in the United Kingdom, 1701–1918

The British data from the early 1700s through WWI provide an unmatched opportunity for studying temporary changes in government purchases. Temporary increases, which appeared mainly as wartime spending, raised long-term interest rates, but significantly increased the growth rates of money and prices only during suspensions of the gold standard (1797–1821 and 1914–1918). Temporary changes in military spending accounted for the bulk of budget deficits; over the sample of more than 200 years, I found only two major non-war deficits — one associated with compensation payments to slaveowners in 1835–1936 and the other with a dispute over the income tax in 1909–1910. Interest rates did not react much to these ‘exogenous’ deficits.     

Financial investor sentiment and the boom/bust in oil prices during 2003–2008

From both theoretical and policy perspectives, it is important to understand if financial speculation contributes to the boom/bust in oil prices during 2003–2008. In this paper, we disentangle the effects of financial speculation from those of economic fundamentals by focusing on exogenous changes of financial speculation in oil markets identified by changes in financial investor sentiment. Furthermore, we focus on a quasi-experiment setting, and investigate both sentiment-driven overvaluation of oil prices and subsequent mispricing correction. Our findings suggest that financial speculation might have contributed to the 2003–2008 boom/bust in oil prices.     

Food prices,tax reforms and consumer Welfare in Tanzania 1991–2007

This paper analyses the effect of observed food price changes on household consumption (welfare) in Tanzania and from this simulates the welfare effect attributable to tax (tariffs and VAT) reforms. The three rounds of the Tanzania Household Budget Survey (1991/92, 2000/01 and 2007) are used to apply Deaton’s method based on median unit values (prices) and household budget shares. The results indicate that real price increases over 1991–2007 have reduced welfare of the average household by 20 per cent of 1991 income, and the loss was fairly evenly distributed between the 1990s and 2000s. The welfare loss was much greater for the poor, especially the rural poor (a 27 per cent reduction), compared to the non-poor (in particular the urban non-poor, who suffered a five per cent loss). Although we cannot establish explicit links between tax reforms and domestic commodity price changes, to assess the extent to which welfare changes can be explained by tax reforms we simulate the effects of tax changes on domestic price changes. The simulation shows that tax reforms (tariff reductions) offset the welfare losses for all household groups, especially in the 1990s; although the differences were small, the urban poor benefit more in relative terms from tax reforms whereas the rural poor benefit least (the effect on the non-poor was similar irrespective of location).     

Oil prices and economic policy uncertainty: Evidence from global,oil importers,and exporters’ perspective

Containing various information, economic policy uncertainty reflects significant rises and declines when facing shocks like financial crisis, oil-price change, and other specific economic or policy events. This paper empirically studies the interaction between oil prices and the newly formulated economic policy uncertainty indices using a time-varying parameter vector autoregression framework. Generally, the results of this study suggest that economic policy uncertainty reveals fluctuating responses to oil price shocks, while the oil price has a negative response to the uncertainty. The findings also reveal that the economic policy uncertainty indices for oil-importers and oil-exporters respond to oil price shocks differently. The oil price shock has a larger fluctuation to the economic policy uncertainty of oil-exporters than that of importers. Moreover, for the oil-exporters, the negative response to the oil price shock is greater than that of the oil-importing countries. This paper also discusses the impact of asymmetric shocks of oil price on economic policy uncertainty. In particular, after two financial crises, positive shocks decrease the uncertainty and vice versa. These findings are robustly verified.     

Does financial globalization still spur growth in emerging and developing countries? Considering exchange rates

This paper analyzes the effects of financial globalization on growth in developing countries, focusing on its interaction with exchange rate volatility. Based on dynamic panel data models and the two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator, it replicates the method of Gaies et al. (2019a; 2019b) and extends it by exploring a new spillover effect of financial globalization in terms of exchange rate volatility measured by six different indicators. The findings show the positive influence of investment–globalization (foreign direct investment and portfolio investment) on growth through the traditional channel of capital accumulation and by reducing the negative impact of exchange rate volatility. These impacts are not insured by indebtedness–globalization (foreign debt), thereby shedding light on the government’s decision in developing countries on foreign capital control policy. These results are robust to changes in the estimator and variables used.     

Of substitutes and complements: trade credit versus bank loans in Japan, 1980–2012

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper explores the interplay of trade credit and short-term bank loans between 1980 and 2012 in Japan. Many of the issues discussed for the U.S....     

Foreign exchange,fractional cointegration and the implied–realized volatility relation

Almost all relevant literature has characterized implied volatility as a biased predictor of realized volatility. In this paper we provide new time series techniques to investigate the validity of this finding in several foreign exchange options markets, including the Euro market. First, we develop a new fractional cointegration test that is shown to be robust to both stationary and non-stationary regions. Second, we employ both intra-day and daily data to measure realized volatility in order to assess the relevance of data frequency in resolving the bias. Third, we use data on implied volatility traded on the market. In contrast to previous studies, we show that the frequency of data used for measuring realized volatility within a fractionally cointegrating framework is important for the results of unbiasedness tests. Significantly, for many popular exchange rates, the use of intra-day rather than daily data affects the emergence of a different bias, as the possibility of a fractionally integrated risk premium admits itself!     

Did mega-regional trade agreements reshuffle the financial influence of the US,China, and Japan in ASEAN? Evidence from the volatility-spillover effects

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the succeeding Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) were widely viewed as trade agreements aiming at containing the influence of China and raising that of the US and Japan in Asia. This study utilizes the outward volatility-spillover effect of the equity market as a proxy for a country’s financial influence and analyzes whether the signing of the TPP and CPTPP reshuffled the financial influence of the US, China, and Japan in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The study finds that the TPP and CPTPP did boost the financial influence of the US and Japan in some ASEAN countries; however, there is no evidence that they have reduced the financial influence of China in ASEAN.     

The role of private information in return volatility,bid–ask spreads and price levels in the foreign exchange market

Trading volume and order flow have both been closely associated with informed trader activity in the market microstructure literature. Using theory that explains regular intraday patterns in trading data, we transform these two variables into proxies for private information and examine their relationships with bid–ask spreads and return volatility. We use a unique and unusually rich high-frequency intraday dataset from the world's largest financial market, namely, the electronic inter-dealer spot foreign exchange market. Our analysis takes account of institutional features peculiar to this order-driven market. Our empirical results strongly affirm our theoretical understanding of how these markets work. They also reveal how the structure of the inter-dealer spot FX market affects exchange rate volatility. Finally, we also explore how private information contributes to the evolution of prices.     

The decline of calendar seasonality in the Australian stock exchange, 1958–2005

This paper examines calendar effects in Australian daily stock returns from 6 January 1958 to 30 December 2005. Three calendar effects—day-of-the-week, turn-of-the-month and month-of-the-year—are examined using parametric tests and a regression-based approach. The results indicate that the Australian market is characterised by seasonality of all three forms, with Tuesday, September and the second trading day of the month the most significant. However, there is also evidence of parameter instability and structural breaks in these relationships, with day-of-the-week effects becoming less important in the post-1987 crash period.     

Housing Starts in Canada, Japan, and the United States: Do Forecasters Herd?

Recent price trends in housing markets may reflect herding of market participants. A natural question is whether such herding, to the extent that it occurred, reflects herding in forecasts of professional forecasters. Using survey data for Canada, Japan, and the United States, we did not find evidence of forecaster herding. On the contrary, forecasters anti-herd and, thereby, tend to intentionally scatter their forecasts around the consensus forecast. The extent of anti-herding seems to vary over time. For Canada and the United States, we found that more pronounced anti-herding leads to lower forecast accuracy.     

Time-varying risk premia in foreign exchange and equity markets: evidence from Asia–Pacific countries

This paper examines the validity of the risk premia hypothesis in explaining deviations from Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP) and the role of deviations from Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) in the pricing of foreign exchange rates and equity securities in five Asia–Pacific countries and the US. Using weekly data from 1 January, 1988 to 27 February, 1998, I find that conditional variances are not related to the deviations from UIP in any statistical sense based on an univariate GARCH(1,1)-M model. As I consider both foreign exchange and equity markets together and test a conditional international CAPM (ICAPM) in the absence of PPP, I cannot reject the model based on the J-test by Hansen (Econometrica 50 (1982), 1029–1054) and find significant time-varying foreign exchange risk premia present in the data. This empirical evidence supports the notion of time-varying risk premia in explaining the deviations from UIP. It also supports the idea that the foreign exchange risk is not diversifiable and hence should be priced in both markets.     

Enter the dragon: Interactions between Chinese,US and Asia-Pacific equity markets, 1995–2010

This paper applies a variety of short-run and long-run time series techniques to data on a broad group of Asia-Pacific stock markets and the United States extending to 2010. Our empirical work confirms the importance of crises in affecting the persistence of equity returns in the Asia-Pacific region and offers some support for contagion effects. Post-Asian financial crisis quantile regressions yield substantial evidence of long-run linkages between the Shanghai market, the US market and many regional exchanges. Cointegration is particularly prevalent at the higher end of the distribution. Our results suggest that the enormous growth of the Shanghai market in the new millennium has been accompanied by a meaningful level of integration with other regional and world markets in spite of ongoing capital controls.     

Political–security risk in the oil and gas industry: the impact of terrorism on risk management and mitigation

Oil and gas companies are experiencing an increase in terrorist attacks. The industry became a legitimate target for terrorist groups in the 1990s and the number of attacks have increased yearly, with a spike after the 9/11 attacks. In today’s interconnected world, political risk is not only about the relationship between the host government and the company. Oil and gas companies may experience risks on a transnational, national and human security level. The success of new investments often depends on the successful utilization of risk management strategies. This study focuses on the importance of political–security risk in the oil and gas industry. In January 2013, the oil and gas industry experienced one of its deadliest attacks at the In Amenas gas facility in Algeria, forcing firms to reconsider its focus on security management. Statoil undertook a thorough analysis of security at the site as well as of the company′s corporate security risk management. The report revealed a lack of focus on political–security risk. This study argues that political–security risk has not been used to its full potential in the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry has always focused on site security, but a broader more holistic approach to risk management has been lacking. As a result of the In Amenas incident, the industry has become more willing to have a new discussion on security and this has resulted in changes in the way companies operate.     

Exchange rate regimes and prices: The cases of Italy,Spain and the United Kingdom (1874–1998)

This paper studies the relationship among Italian, Spanish and United Kingdom prices over the period 1874–1998, for most of which the currencies of these three countries maintained a floating exchange rate regime. By using cointegration techniques with broken linear trends, we find a single vector for the period 1874–1935 and two vectors and, consequently, a single common trend for the period 1940–1998. Therefore, this paper provides new evidence of no long-run monetary independence under floating regimes. Furthermore, the price differential dynamics captured by deterministic trends in the period 1940–1998, as well as agreeing with the evidence of long-run transmission of interest rates in the floating post-Bretton Woods era, fit in perfectly with the new de facto taxonomies on exchange rates.     

Leader–member exchange,affective commitment,engagement, wellbeing,and intention to leave: public versus private sector Italian nurses

In the context of nurse shortages and budget constraints in hospitals, retaining skilled nurses is crucial. This paper investigates the impact of supervisor–nurse relationships on engagement, wellbeing, affective commitment and turnover intention for Italian private and public sector nurses. Private sector nurses in Italy were found to be more committed, engaged and had higher perceptions of wellbeing than public sector nurses. Based on these results, public managers need to do more to sustain the motivation of nurses in public sector hospitals.