Estimating the price deflator for nominal cash balances

A differential money demand equation is used to estimate the weight given to each commodity group in the price index which transforms nominal into real cash balances. The results indicate that food receives the largest weight and that the CPI is a good proxy for the true deflator.     

Quantile forecasts of daily exchange rate returns from forecasts of realized volatility

Quantile forecasts are central to risk management decisions because of the widespread use of Value-at-Risk. A quantile forecast is the product of two factors: the model used to forecast volatility, and the method of computing quantiles from the volatility forecasts. In this paper we calculate and evaluate quantile forecasts of the daily exchange rate returns of five currencies. The forecasting models that have been used in recent analyses of the predictability of daily realized volatility permit a comparison of the predictive power of different measures of intraday variation and intraday returns in forecasting exchange rate variability. The methods of computing quantile forecasts include making distributional assumptions for future daily returns as well as using the empirical distribution of predicted standardized returns with both rolling and recursive samples. Our main findings are that the Heterogenous Autoregressive model provides more accurate volatility and quantile forecasts for currencies which experience shifts in volatility, such as the Canadian dollar, and that the use of the empirical distribution to calculate quantiles can improve forecasts when there are shifts.     

Understanding New Resource Projects

The surge in new resource projects has been a prominent feature of the recent strong performance of the Australian economy, with mining and energy investment accounting for almost one‐half of all private investment. Although the current round of resource investment has now peaked, as swings in the resource sector tend to repeat themselves, there is an ongoing need to carefully understand the available information sources. We use a specially developed panel of matched projects from three widely followed, but under‐researched, sources to analyze cost inflation, the biases, the degree of independence, and timeliness of each source. This information is of use to policy makers who have to closely monitor these developments, analysts following the resources sector, and project proponents wanting to know something about the typical cost profile of a project.     

The jump component of S&P 500 volatility and the VIX index

Much research has investigated the differences between option implied volatilities and econometric model-based forecasts. Implied volatility is a market determined forecast, in contrast to model-based forecasts that employ some degree of smoothing of past volatility to generate forecasts. Implied volatility has the potential to reflect information that a model-based forecast could not. This paper considers two issues relating to the informational content of the S&P 500 VIX implied volatility index. First, whether it subsumes information on how historical jump activity contributed to the price volatility, followed by whether the VIX reflects any incremental information pertaining to future jump activity relative to model-based forecasts. It is found that the VIX index both subsumes information relating to past jump contributions to total volatility and reflects incremental information pertaining to future jump activity. This issue has not been examined previously and expands our understanding of how option markets form their volatility forecasts.     

Understanding resource investments

The Millennium Boom of 2003–2011 made the resources industry highly profitable and led to a surge in new projects around the world. This had major implications for the Australian economy: Resource investment accounted for almost half of all business investment at the peak and the buoyancy of the sector helped Australia to avoid the worst of the global financial crisis. Using the event-study approach, this article examines the wealth-creating effects of new resource projects at the individual company level. The results indicate substantial increases in shareholder returns occur around the time of announcements of government approval for projects, the finalization of feasibility studies and changes in the status of projects such as when a company decides to finally commit to invest in a project. Government approval is the most important milestone in the life cycle of a project, where abnormal returns around 4% are realized on announcement day.     

The Impact of Cultural Differences on the Convergence of International Accounting Codes of Ethics

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has issued a revised “Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants” (IFAC Code). The IFAC Code is intended to be a model code of ethics for national accounting organizations throughout the world. Prior research demonstrates that approximately 50% of IFAC member organizations have adopted the IFAC Code as their organizational code of conduct. There is therefore empirical evidence that international convergence of accounting ethical standards is occurring. We employ Hofstede’s (2008, http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_dimensions.php) cultural dimensions in an attempt to empirically explain accounting organizations’ decisions about whether to adopt the IFAC Code or to retain their organization-specific code. Our results indicate that accounting organizations in cultures with high levels of Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance are less likely to adopt the model IFAC Code. Organizations in high Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance societies are therefore less likely to surrender the setting of ethical standards to an outside, international organization.     

Do interest rate controls work? Evidence from Kenya

This paper reviews the impact of interest rate controls in Kenya, introduced in September 2016. The intent of the controls was to reduce the cost of borrowing, expand access to credit, and increase the return on savings. However, we find that the law on interest rate controls has had the opposite effect of what was intended. Specifically, it has led to a collapse of credit to micro‐, small‐, and medium‐sized enterprises; shrinking of the loan book of the small banks; and reduced financial intermediation. Because of their adverse effects on bank lending, we estimate that the interest rate controls have reduced economic growth by ¼–¾ percentage points on an annual basis. We also show that interest rate caps reduced the signaling effects of monetary policy. These suggest that (1) the adverse effects could largely be avoided if the ceiling was high enough to facilitate lending to higher‐risk borrowers and (2) alternative policies could be preferable to address concerns about the high cost of credit.     

Understanding alcohol consumption across countries

ABSTRACT

With unpublished data from the International Comparison Program that cover the consumption of three alcoholic beverages in over 150 countries, we analyse drinking patterns around the world with an index-number approach, by estimating a demand system, and by studying the interaction among beverages in generating utility. We consider a separate demand system for each income quartile and find that tastes are not too different across quartiles. Broadly speaking, the results are robust to rolling sub-samples of countries, an alternative demand model and sample selectivity issues. The differences in the cost of alcohol across countries are also investigated, as is its role in affecting the degree of price-sensitivity of consumption.     

Do survey joiners and leavers differ from regular participants? The US SPF GDP growth and inflation forecasts

If ‘learning by doing’ is important for macro-forecasting, newcomers might be different from regular, established participants. Stayers may also differ from the soon-to-leave. We test these conjectures for macro-forecasters’ point predictions of output growth and inflation, and for their histogram forecasts. Histogram forecasts of inflation by both joiners and leavers are found to be less accurate, especially if we suppose that joiners take time to learn. For GDP growth, there is no evidence of differences between the groups in terms of histogram forecast accuracy, although GDP point forecasts by leavers are less accurate. These findings are predicated on forecasters being homogeneous within groups. Allowing for individual fixed effects suggests fewer differences, including leavers’ inflation histogram forecasts being no less accurate.