Pricing Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS)

This paper presents a pricing formula for MBSs andproposes a specific model for MBS prices thatdescribes the so-called burnout phenomenon ofprepayments due to refinancing. A numerical exampleof the model is demonstrated by Monte Carlosimulation. An estimation procedure is alsodescribed.     

Investment and capital structure decisions of foreign subsidiary with international debt shifting and exchange rate uncertainty

This paper examines the impact of international debt shifting and exchange rate uncertainty on investment and capital structure decisions of foreign subsidiary. We find that debt shifting induces earlier investment, earlier default, higher leverage, and larger ex ante firm value of foreign subsidiary. When debt shifting is not so costly, the optimal leverage of foreign subsidiary increases as the tax rate differential increases. Moreover, when the correlation between exchange rate and foreign cash flow uncertainties is positive (negative, respectively), foreign investment advances as exchange rate uncertainty increases (decreases) as well as the correlation increases. These results reveal that the impact of debt shifting and exchange rate uncertainty on investment and capital structure policies cannot be ignored, supporting existing empirical findings.     

Credit Events and the Valuation of Credit Derivatives of Basket Type

Thispaper provides a simple model for valuing a credit derivativewhose payoff depends on the identity (or identities) of the first(or first two) to occur of a given list of credit events, suchas defaults. The joint survival probability of occurrence timesof credit events is formulated in terms of stochastic intensityprocesses under the assumption of conditional independence. Basedon the joint survival probability, we can easily obtain the pricingformulas of such credit derivatives under the risk-neutral valuationframework. When the default intensity processes follow the extendedVasicek model, closed-form solutions of the pricing formulasare given.     

EKC-type transitions and environmental policy under pollutant uncertainty and cost irreversibility

Previous studies have suggested that some pollutant levels first increases due to the economic growth and then start decreasing, the pattern being called the “environmental Kuznets curve” (EKC). We examine EKC-type transitions of pollutant levels not with respect to economic growth but more generally in time. Assuming that each policy maker optimally executes the two switching options of regulation and unregulation for pollution, the switching dynamics of environmental policy can be described by an alternating renewal process. It is shown that the double Laplace transform of transition density of a pollutant level can be obtained by a novel application of renewal theory. The expected level of overall pollutants is then calculated numerically and found to exhibit either a Λ‐shaped or an N-shaped pattern in time. Our results present a simple explanation for the EKC-type transitions of pollutant levels within a real options framework.     

The role of strategic alliances in high-technology new product development

The authors examined 905 new product innovations introduced since September 1988 to determine the influences on product innovativeness, with a specific interest in strategic alliances, or cooperative strategies. Findings suggest that single firms, horizontal cooperative strategies, small and mixed'sized firms, biochemical industries, cross-industry product offerings, cross-industry cooperations, the progression of time, and European firms tend to indicate significantly more innovative products. Implications are proposed for business practitioners and researchers with specific application to the diffusion of innovation.     

A comparative static analysis of tax incidence

The model presented by Harberger (1962) in his famous article has received a good deal of attention from economists concerned with the incidence of taxes in a general equilibrium setting. Through problems posed by using the Harberger model have been frequently pointed out by several authors, no attempt has been made to generalize the model to deal adequately with the tax incidence problem. This paper aims to follow a new method of conducting a comparative static analysis of tax incidence, and to extend the results derived by earlier contributions in a more general context.     

Central limit theorem for the realized volatility based on tick time sampling

A central limit theorem for the realized volatility estimator of the integrated volatility based on a specific random sampling scheme is proved, where prices are sampled with every ‘continued price change’ in bid or ask quotation data. The estimator is shown to be robust to market microstructure noise induced by price discreteness and bid–ask spreads. More general sampling schemes also are treated in case that the price process is a diffusion.     

PORTFOLIO SELECTION PROBLEMS VIA THE BIVARIATE CHARACTERIZATION OF STOCHASTIC DOMINANCE RELATIONS1

Stochastic dominance (SD) is a very useful tool in various areas of economics and finance. the purpose of this paper is to provide the results of SD relations developed in other areas such as applied probability which, we believe, are useful for many portfolio selection problems. In particular, the bivariate characterization of SD relations given by Shanthikumar and Yao (1991) is a powerful tool for the demand and the shift effect problems in optimal portfolios. the method enables one to extend many results that hold for the case where the underlying lying assets are statistically independent to the dependent case directly.     

The microstructural foundations of leverage effect and rough volatility

We show that typical behaviors of market participants at the high frequency scale generate leverage effect and rough volatility. To do so, we build a simple microscopic model for the price of an asset based on Hawkes processes. We encode in this model some of the main features of market microstructure in the context of high frequency trading: high degree of endogeneity of market, no-arbitrage property, buying/selling asymmetry and presence of metaorders. We prove that when the first three of these stylized facts are considered within the framework of our microscopic model, it behaves in the long run as a Heston stochastic volatility model, where a leverage effect is generated. Adding the last property enables us to obtain a rough Heston model in the limit, exhibiting both leverage effect and rough volatility. Hence we show that at least part of the foundations of leverage effect and rough volatility can be found in the microstructure of the asset.