Intertemporal substitution in consumption, labor supply elasticity and sunspot fluctuations in continuous-time models

The aim of this paper is to discuss the roles of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption and the elasticity of the labor supply on the local determinacy properties of the steady state in a two-sector economy with constant elasticity of substitution technologies and sector-specific externalities. Our main results provide necessary and sufficient conditions for local indeterminacy. First, we show that the consumption good sector needs to be capital intensive at the private level and labor intensive at the social level. Second, we prove that under this capital intensity configuration, the existence of sunspot fluctuations is obtained if and only if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is large enough but the elasticity of the labor supply is low enough. In particular, we will show on the one hand that when the labor supply is infinitely elastic, the steady state is always saddle-point stable, and on the other hand that when the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is infinite, labor does not have any influence on the local stability properties of the equilibrium path.     

Endogenous Choice of Trade Instrument Under Uncertainty *

This Paper endogenizes the choice between import tariffs and quotas of two policy active countries in a duopsonistic world market. Without uncertainty, import quotas are welfare superior to import tariffs in equilibrium. If two importers can precommit to a type of instrument before deciding the level of the instrument to use in a future period, an import quota equilibrium emerges. We introduce asymmetric risk in the import demand schedule of the two importers. There exists a range of parameters in which a mixed equilibrium emerges, i.e. one country uses a tariff while the other restricts trade with an import quota. The likelihood that both importers choose a different trade instrument in equilibrium is increasing with the correlation coefficient of the two random shocks. [F13]     

Random walks,liquidity molasses and critical response in financial markets

Stock prices are observed to be random walks in time despite a strong, long-term memory in the signs of trades (buys or sells). Lillo and Farmer have recently suggested that these correlations are compensated by opposite long-ranged fluctuations in liquidity, with an otherwise permanent market impact, challenging the scenario proposed in Quantitative Finance, 2004, 4, 176, where the impact is instead transient, with a power-law decay in time. The exponent of this decay is precisely tuned to a critical value, ensuring simultaneously that prices are diffusive on long time scales and that the impact function is nearly lag independent. We provide new analysis of empirical data that confirm and make more precise our previous claims. We show that the power-law decay of the bare impact function comes both from an excess flow of limit order opposite to the market order flow, and to a systematic anti-correlation of the bid–ask motion between trades, two effects that create a ‘liquidity molasses’ which dampens market volatility.     

Impact is not just volatility

With a simple scaling argument we show empirically that impact growing as the square-root of trading volume has nothing to do with diffusion price changes growing as the square root of time     

Strategic foresight and organizational learning: A survey and critical analysis

Learning phenomena are a growing concern for strategic foresight, especially with respect to the question of integration of reflection and action. Although an agreement seems to emerge between practitioners and theorists about strong ties linking strategic foresight and learning (in particular organizational learning), the true nature of this link remains ambiguous. This article seeks to shed light on this link and to analyze the cognitive dimensions of foresight through a critical survey. The investigation follows the original ambivalence between foresight attitude and activity thus underscoring not only the virtues of foresight in learning phenomena, but also the limits of the usual literature.     

Exchange rate pass-through, menu costs and threshold cointegration

This paper investigates exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) in the presence of menu costs. Assuming exports prices are negotiated in the exporter’s currency, menu costs give rise to two thresholds around (within) which incomplete ERPT is (not) observed. An error correcting process is triggered from a deviation in the ERPT cointegrating relation only when the deviation is large enough in absolute value to fall outside of a band defined by symmetric thresholds. Threshold autoregressive (TAR) cointegration techniques are used to investigate Quebec and Ontario pork meat export prices in the US and Japanese markets. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we find that our Equilibrium-TAR tests have greater power than a standard unit root test. Our empirical application suggests that Canadian pork exporters exercise market power in the US market. The evidence of incomplete ERPT in the Japanese market is weaker and differs across provinces. Evidence of thresholds is reported for both destinations, thus indicating the existence of significant menu costs for Canadian pork exporters in these markets.     

Behavioural heterogeneity in wine investments

We introduce a heterogeneous agent model to explain the dynamics of fine wine investments. Our results show evidence of the existence of both fundamentalists – those who trade on mean-reversion towards a fair value – and chartists – those who extrapolate recently observed price trends – in the wine market. Moreover, we document that market participants switch between the two trading strategies, allocating more weight to the strategy that has been the most accurate in forecasting wine index values in the recent past. This switching behaviour can explain the large variations in index values (bubbles and crashes) that are observed in the fine wine market.     

Sarmanov Family of Bivariate Distributions for Multivariate Loss Reserving Analysis

The correlation among multiple lines of business plays a critical role in aggregating claims and thus determining loss reserves for an insurance portfolio. We show that the Sarmanov family of bivariate distributions is a convenient choice to capture the dependencies introduced by various sources, including the common calendar year, accident year, and development period effects. The density of the bivariate Sarmanov distributions with different marginals can be expressed as a linear combination of products of independent marginal densities. This pseudo-conjugate property greatly reduces the complexity of posterior computations. In a case study, we analyze an insurance portfolio of personal and commercial auto lines from a major U.S. property-casualty insurer.     

Dairy Trade Liberalization Impacts in Canada

Supply management in Canada is facing broad trade liberalization pressures. This paper uses a spatial equilibrium trade model to simulate the impacts of various trade liberalization scenarios in the Canadian dairy industry. The results critically hinge on the relationship between increased market access and the market sharing quota (MSQ) at the farm level. Two different MSQ decision rules are simulated: (i) global output at the farm level remains unchanged following liberalization; and (ii) the MSQ is reduced to support the unit production quota rent at its preliberalization level. The results show that if the MSQ is held constant following a potential compromise in the Doha Round, retail prices of fluid milk and cheese would decrease by about 5%. These price movements can be negated by a 1.4% cut in the global MSQ at the farm level. Net welfare gains in the Canadian dairy sector following market access reforms range between $48.2 and $64.2 million when evaluated at the 2003–04 world prices. Le courant de libéralisation des échanges crée une certaine pression sur les programmes de gestion de l'offre au Canada. Ce papier présente un modèle de commerce en équilibre spatial afin de simuler les effets de différents scénarios de libéralisation des échanges sur l'industrie laitière canadienne. Les résultats dépendent fortement de la relation entre amélioration de l'accès au marché et quota de mise en marché (QMM). Deux différentes règles de décision du QMM sont simulées : i) la production globale est inchangée après la libéralisation ; et ii) le QMM est réduit afin d'assurer une rente de quota par unité de production identique à son niveau de pré‐libéralisation. Les résultats associés à un compromis potentiel dans le cadre du Cycle de Doha indiquent que les prix au détail du lait de consommation et du fromage diminueraient d'environ 5% si le QMM demeure constant. En revanche, les variations de prix seraient nulles si le QMM est réduit de 1.4%. Suivant les scénarios de libéralisation des échanges considérés, le gain net pour l'industrie laitière canadienne serait compris entre 48.2 et 64.2 millions de dollars, lorsqu'évalué aux prix mondiaux de 2003/2004.