An empirical analysis of the relationship between the hedge ratio and hedging horizon: A simultaneous estimation of the short‐ and long‐run hedge ratios

This article analyzes the effects of the length of hedging horizon on the optimal hedge ratio and hedging effectiveness using 9 different hedging horizons and 25 different commodities. We discuss the concept of short‐ and long‐run hedge ratios and propose a technique to simultaneously estimate them. The empirical results indicate that the short‐run hedge ratios are significantly less than 1 and increase with the length of hedging horizon. We also find that hedging effectiveness increases with the length of hedging horizon. However, the long‐run hedge ratio is found to be close to the naïve hedge ratio of unity. This implies that, if the hedging horizon is long, then the naïve hedge ratio is close to the optimum hedge ratio. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:359–386, 2004     

Scarcity and appropriative competition

This paper formalizes the commonsensical hypothesis that resource scarcity causes a large allocation of time and effort to appropriative competition. Our main innovation is to model explicitly the positive intertemporal effect of consumption on the probability of survival. The critical assumption is that this effect becomes stronger as resources become scarcer. We also show that anticipated future resource abundance increases the incremental value of survival and, consequently, amplifies the current allocation of time and effort to appropriative competition. Interestingly, if resources are currently scarce, then larger anticipated future abundance can cause a big enough increase in the time and effort allocated to appropriative competition to result in a decrease in the sum of current and expected future utility, a “paradox of anticipated abundance”.     

General‐to‐Specific Model Selection Procedures for Structural Vector Autoregressions*

Structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models have emerged as a dominant research strategy in empirical macroeconomics, but suffer from the large number of parameters employed and the resulting estimation uncertainty associated with their impulse responses. In this paper, we propose general‐to‐specific (Gets) model selection procedures to overcome these limitations. It is shown that single‐equation procedures are generally efficient for the reduction of recursive SVAR models. The small‐sample properties of the proposed reduction procedure (as implemented using PcGets) are evaluated in a realistic Monte Carlo experiment. The impulse responses generated by the selected SVAR are found to be more precise and accurate than those of the unrestricted VAR. The proposed reduction strategy is then applied to the US monetary system considered by Christiano, Eichenbaum and Evans (Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 78, pp. 16–34, 1996) . The results are consistent with the Monte Carlo and question the validity of the impulse responses generated by the full system.     

Syndicated Loan Announcements and Borrower Value

Announcements of syndication loans increase borrowers' shareholder wealth if they are revolving credit agreements but not if they are term loans. Share price responses to revolving credit announcements are positive and significant, whereas the wealth effect for term loans is negative and significant. The results show that announcements from both the financial press and commercial information providers can affect borrower share price reaction. Overall, single syndication announcements appear to be more newsworthy than multiple announcements reported in the financial press, and we find evidence of information leakage, post‐announcement drift, or both.     

外贸公司，奶酪还有多大

2006年2月10日，厦门第一家纯外资贸易公司——亿明（厦门）贸易有限公司成立。注册资金仅2000万日元，虽然市外贸局外贸处曾文生处长对记者表示，这家公司还没有到厦门市贸易发展局登记。但外界纷言。亿明（厦门）贸易有限公司的成立，有着特殊意义，标志着更规范意义上的跨国公司采购时代来临了。尽管它的成立比法国欧尚进入上海晚了4年。[编者按]     

Improved estimation of portfolio value‐at‐risk under copula models with mixed marginals

Portfolio value‐at‐risk (PVAR) is widely used in practice, but recent criticisms have focused on risks arising from biased PVAR estimates due to model specification errors and other problems. The PVAR estimation method proposed in this article combines generalized Pareto distribution tails with the empirical density function to model the marginal distributions for each asset in the portfolio, and a copula model is used to form a joint distribution from the fitted marginals. The copula–mixed distribution (CMX) approach converges in probability to the true marginal return distribution but is based on weaker assumptions that may be appropriate for the returns data found in practice. CMX is used to estimate the joint distribution of log returns for the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) index and the associated futures contracts on SGX and TAIFEX. The PVAR estimates for various hedge portfolios are computed from the fitted CMX model, and backtesting diagnostics indicate that CMX outperforms the alternative PVAR estimators. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 26:997–1018, 2006     

废线路板热解处理研究现状

综述了近年来国内外废旧线路板热解处理技术研究现状。着重介绍了废旧线路板热解回收的工艺、热解产物、热解机理和动力学等方面的研究进展，讨论了热解回收技术存在的问题和发展方向。     

Financial Development and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Six MENA Countries

This paper examines the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth for six Middle Eastern and North African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia), within a quadvariate vector autoregressive framework. We employ four different measures of financial development and apply the augmented vector autoregression vector (VAR) methodology of Toda and Yamamoto to test for Granger causality. Our empirical results strongly support the hypothesis that finance leads to growth in five out of the six countries. Only in Israel could weak support be found for causality running from economic growth to financial development but no causality in the other direction. These findings suggest the need to accelerate the financial reforms that have been launched since the mid 1980s and to improve the efficiency of these countries’ financial systems to stimulate saving/investment and, consequently, long‐term economic growth.     

Looking for contagion in currency futures markets

This article tests whether there are pure contagion effects in both conditional means and volatilities among British pound, Canadian dollar, Deutsche mark, and Swiss franc futures markets during the 1992 ERM crisis. A conditional version of international capital asset pricing model (ICAPM) in the absence of purchasing power parity (PPP) is used to control for economic fundamentals. The empirical results indicate that overall there are no mean spillovers among those futures markets, but they are detected during the crisis period. That is, past return shocks originating in any one of the four markets have no impact on the other three markets during the entire sample period, suggesting that these markets are weak‐form efficient. However, this weak‐form market efficiency fails to hold during the market turmoil, especially for British pound and Swiss franc, and the sources of contagion‐in‐mean effects are mainly due to the return shocks originating in three European currency futures markets. As for the contagion‐in‐volatility, it is detected for British pound only because its conditional volatility is influenced by the negative volatility shocks from Canadian dollar, Deutsche mark, and Swiss franc, with Deutsche mark playing the dominant role in generating these shocks. JEL Classifications: C32; F31; G12. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:957–988, 2003     

MANAGING VENDOR INVENTORY IN A DUAL LEVEL DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Collaborative arrangements among members of the supply chain have received a great deal of interest in recent years as a means of reducing costs. One such arrangement is vendor managed inventory (VMI). VMI allows the vendor to make decisions concerning the quantity and timing of deliveries to the retailer. Such an arrangement offers the potential of a more efficient supply chain by removing the negative effects of retail ordering policies. A thorough review of the literature was conducted to identify factors likely to impact the performance of a VMI partnership. Computer simulation was used to study the effects of these factors from both the vendor's and retailer's perspectives. The results lend insight into the performance of VMI and guidance for managers as to the environments in which VMI is most effective.