Nonlinear Mean-Reversion in Real Exchange Rates: Toward a Solution To the Purchasing Power Parity Puzzles

We fit nonlinearly mean-reverting models to real dollar exchange rates over the post-Bretton Woods period, consistent with a theoretical literature on transactions costs in international arbitrage. The half lives of real exchange rate shocks, calculated through Monte Carlo integration, imply faster adjustment speeds than hitherto recorded. Monte Carlo simulations reconcile our results with the large empirical literature on unit roots in real exchange rates by showing that when the real exchange rate is nonlinearly mean reverting, standard univariate unit root tests have low power, while multivariate tests have much higher power to reject a false null hypothesis.     

Mean reversion in stock index futures markets: A nonlinear analysis

Several stylized theoretical models of futures basis behavior under nonzero transactions costs predict nonlinear mean reversion of the futures basis towards its equilibrium value. Nonlinearly mean‐reverting models are employed to characterize the basis of the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100 indices over the post‐1987 crash period, capturing empirically these theoretical predictions and examining the view that the degree of mean reversion in the basis is a function of the size of the deviation from equilibrium. The estimated half lives of basis shocks, obtained using Monte Carlo integration methods, suggest that for smaller shocks to the basis level the basis displays substantial persistence, while for larger shocks the basis exhibits highly nonlinear mean reversion towards its equilibrium value. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:285–314, 2002     

Risk Mapping and Key Risk Indicators in Operational Risk Management

In this article I describe a methodology for the mapping of Operational Risk with the objective of identifying the risks inherent in the different steps of a business process, selecting a set of variables providing an estimate for the likelihood and the severity of operational risk (Key Risk Indicators – KRIs) and designing the most appropriate control activities. I then present two examples of how the methodology described can be applied to map risks and of how a set of relevant KRIs can be identified in the front office of a trading business and in the back office of a lending business. Finally, I discuss how the information conveyed by the KRIs can be organised and summarised in order to provide a comprehensive look at the risk profile of the various business lines. The structured presentation of KRIs covering the business processes of a bank is what we call an Operational Risk Scorecard.     

Merging for Capacity and a Capacity for Merging: Politicians,Citizens, and Discourses in Public Administrations

It is assumed in many countries that the merger of municipalities can increase the capacity of their public administrations. This paper concentrates primarily on the activities preceding the implementation of the merger, by analyzing the ex‐ante stages of the process. Using a case study, the paper analyzes the activities used to explain the merger initiative to citizens and to overcome any potential resistance. The analysis is developed using the Foucauldian concepts of discourse and technology of the self. The aim is to explain the way human resources can and should be managed during the implementation of a capacity‐building initiative.     

Pricing via recursive quantization in stochastic volatility models

We provide the first recursive quantization-based approach for pricing options in the presence of stochastic volatility. This method can be applied to any model for which an Euler scheme is available for the underlying price process and it allows one to price vanillas, as well as exotics, thanks to the knowledge of the transition probabilities for the discretized stock process. We apply the methodology to some celebrated stochastic volatility models, including the Stein and Stein [Rev. Financ. Stud. 1991, (4), 727–752] model and the SABR model introduced in Hagan et al. [Wilmott Mag., 2002, 84–108]. A numerical exercise shows that the pricing of vanillas turns out to be accurate; in addition, when applied to some exotics like equity-volatility options, the quantization-based method overperforms by far the Monte Carlo simulation.     

Testing the convergence hypothesis: a longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis of the world trade web through social network and statistical analyses

Different theoretical perspectives support opposite views on convergence: although the dominant view is that convergence is the inevitable outcome of globalization, divergentists (that is, world-system economists and, potentially, also evolutionary geographic ones) argue that convergence forces could be annihilated by the need to keep power relationships within the international division of labor. Even when limiting the convergence issue to international trade, the debate has so far been inconclusive, because various studies have dealt with different and/or short time series or selected too small and different sets of countries. Moreover, none of these studies have analyzed trade patterns and have instead been limited to the aggregate value. Here, through a social network analysis, we examine the world trade patterns from 1980 to 2016 (1980–1992, 1993–2007 and 2008–2016) of at least 164 countries, which have been divided into import and export patterns and into four groups of countries: from core countries to far periphery ones. We test the convergence hypothesis in two directions: the level and trend of convergence, and its possible determination by means of structural or economic globalization, measured in terms of exchanges density and economic values, respectively. We have found that the convergence hypothesis only seems to be confirmed when considering the pure structural aspect and core countries. Conversely, economic convergence—which also includes the structural dimension—has been found to be high for core countries and to increase over time. Moreover, our analysis shows that economic globalization influences convergence, albeit in a strongly negative way. Therefore, our findings seem to support divergentists and the convergence hypothesis should be rejected.

     

An urn-based Bayesian block bootstrap

Block bootstrap has been introduced in the literature for resampling dependent data, i.e. stationary processes. One of the main assumptions in block bootstrapping is that the blocks of observations are exchangeable, i.e. their joint distribution is immune to permutations. In this paper we propose a new Bayesian approach to block bootstrapping, starting from the construction of exchangeable blocks. Our sampling mechanism is based on a particular class of reinforced urn processes.     

Call for Papers

Submission deadline: September 30, 2009     

How the Subprime Crisis went global: Evidence from bank credit default swap spreads

How did the Subprime Crisis, a problem in a small corner of U.S. financial markets, affect the entire global banking system? To shed light on this question we use principal components analysis to identify common factors in the movement of banks' credit default swap spreads. We find that fortunes of international banks rise and fall together even in normal times along with short-term global economic prospects. But the importance of common factors rose steadily to exceptional levels from the outbreak of the Subprime Crisis to past the rescue of Bear Stearns, reflecting a diffuse sense that funding and credit risk was increasing. Following the failure of Lehman Brothers, the interdependencies briefly increased to a new high, before they fell back to the pre-Lehman elevated levels – but now they more clearly reflected heightened funding and counterparty risk. After Lehman's failure, the prospect of global recession became imminent, auguring the further deterioration of banks' loan portfolios. At this point the entire global financial system had become infected.     

The ‘inventor balance’ and the functional specialization in global inventive activities

Inventors and organizational assets are inputs of inventive activities which are often provided at a global scale, where countries might specialize in the provision of one or the other type of inputs. We introduce a new patent-based metric, the ‘inventor balance’, to quantify this type of functional specialization, which we discover to be considerable, and we propose a conceptual framework to explain it. We observe a progressive ‘decoupling’ of national sub-systems providing respectively inventors and organizational assets. Moreover, we find that countries with a high level of innovativeness relative to their economic development, high technological specialization, and strong individualistic cultural traits, contribute relatively more inventors than organizations to the global production of inventions.