Does the tea market require a futures contract? Evidence from the Sri Lankan tea market

Tea is one of the most popular beverages in the world. Its consumption exceeds the consumption of milk, coffee and orange juice. Despite its importance, tea has not been considered a commodity on financial markets and there is still no futures contract on tea. This study adds to the current literature by providing an overview of the development of the world’s oldest and largely unknown tea market. In addition, this study examines the issue of whether it is feasible to introduce a tea futures contract that would be advantageous for tea market participants. In conclusion, this analysis indicates that introducing a successful tea futures contract is viable but challenging under the existing market structure.     

Synergistic valuations and efficiency in spectrum auctions

In spectrum auctions, bidders typically have synergistic values for combinations of licenses. This has been the key argument for the use of combinatorial auctions in the recent years. Considering synergistic valuations turns the allocation problem into a computationally hard optimization problem that generally cannot be approximated to a constant factor in polynomial time. Ascending auction designs such as the Simultaneous Multiple Round Auction (SMRA) and the single-stage or two-stage Combinatorial Clock Auction (CCA) can be seen as simple heuristic algorithms to solve this problem. Such heuristics do not necessarily compute the optimal solution, even if bidders are truthful. We study the average efficiency loss that can be attributed to the simplicity of the auction algorithm with different levels of synergies. Our simulations are based on realistic instances of bidder valuations we inferred from bid data from the 2014 Canadian 700 MHz auction. The goal of the paper is not to reproduce the results of the Canadian auction but rather to perform “out-of-sample” counterfactuals comparing SMRA and CCA under different synergy conditions when bidders maximize payoff in each round. With “linear” synergies, a bidder's marginal value for a license grows linearly with the total number of licenses won, while with the “extreme national” synergies, this marginal value is independent of the number of licenses won unless the bidder wins all licenses in a national package. We find that with the extreme national synergy model, the CCA is indeed more efficient than SMRA. However, for the more realistic case of linear synergies, SMRA outperforms various versions of CCA that have been implemented in the field including the one used in the Canadian 700 MHz auction. Overall, the efficiency loss of all ascending auction algorithms is small even with high synergies, which is remarkable given the simplicity of the algorithms.     

The entry and exit dynamics of the cryptocurrency market

This paper presents an analysis of the entry and exit dynamics of the cryptocurrency market that focuses on the growth of initial coin offerings during 2015–2020. We used two different datasets: one includes long-lived cryptocurrencies, while the other includes the whole cryptocurrency system at our disposal–that is, it considers the entering and exiting cryptocurrencies. Comparing the dynamics between both datasets with the index cohesive force approach, we assessed how the growth of the initial coin offerings and the exiting cryptocurrencies affected the connectedness of the market. Our results show that the expansion of the cryptocurrency system gave rise to a strong collective movement during 2018–2019. Afterwards, the group pressure, due to the bubble of the initial coin offerings, decreased in favour of the largest cryptocurrencies. Lastly, we observed changes in the hierarchical order of the most influential cryptocurrencies. In particular, Ethereum became the most influential cryptocurrency, at the detriment of Bitcoin.     

市场导向驱动企业绿色技术创新模型构建与路径分析

基于对企业绿色技术创新环境和驱动力转换介质的分析，构建企业绿色技术创新基本要素模型，并给出要素的内涵特征及所遵循的准则，阐述了市场导向对企业绿色技术创新的影响路径。结果显示，企业绿色技术创新发生于系统环境中，并以系统收益最大化为目标，市场化机制是其驱动力转换的重要介质。基础知识突破、企业社会资本积累、产品市场需求、企业创新网络、消费主体意识、市场准入时机及政府政策是企业绿色技术创新要素模型的重要构成。构建和优化企业绿色技术创新基本要素模型必须遵守适合性准则、动态性、干预性及系统性准则，而释放绿色技术创新要素供需信号，促进创新所需要素协同，降低企业绿色技术创新交易成本，提高创新要素配置效率是市场导向影响企业绿色技术创新的主要路径。     

Is competition beneficial? The case of exchange traded funds

New ETF creation has surged in recent years, giving investors the option to choose from a wide range of similar ETFs within each group of competitors. We identify groups of ETFs that can be considered direct competitors and examine the impact of competition on their market quality. Results show improved market quality measures when competition increases. A change equivalent to going from a monopoly to a highly competitive market results in a 29% decrease in bid–ask spreads, a 72% decrease in illiquidity, and a 52% increase in turnover. However, we find that competition has a differential impact on ETFs according to their market depth. Market quality improves with competition for large or well-performing ETFs, while it worsens for small or under-performing ETFs. A case study on ETFs banned by the SEC in March 2010 further highlights our results in the artificially controlled competitive environment of the moratorium.     

Mutual fund liquidity timing ability in the higher moment framework

Using mutual fund data in Thailand, this study shows that fund managers can time the market-wide liquidity in the higher moment framework. High-performing fund managers demonstrate significantly positive liquidity timing ability, while low-performing fund managers do not. Thus, high-performing fund managers increase (decrease) the funds' exposure to the market during a high (low) market liquidity period, while low-performing fund managers do not show the liquidity timing ability. Moreover, only top-performing bank-related mutual funds possess the liquidity timing ability, supporting the information advantage hypothesis. Nonbank-related funds do not possess the liquidity timing ability at both the aggregate and portfolio levels. Several robustness tests confirm the findings.     

产业竞争、非理性行为、公司治理与最优资本结构——现代资本结构理论发展趋势及理论前沿综述

资本结构理论是现代金融理论的重要基石之一。本文主要尝试从学科交叉研究的角度 ,对 1 980年以来资本结构理论发展的主要学术成果进行全面回顾 ,介绍产业组织理论、行为金融理论、公司治理理论和资本结构理论融合发展的最新研究成果和文献 ,充分阐述产业竞争、非理性行为、公司治理和企业最优资本结构之间的内在有机联系 ,并展望现代资本结构理论的进一步发展。     

Competition and performance in the UK telecommunications industry

Judging by historical and crossnational experience, privatization of British Telecom promises to increase the rate of expansion of telecommunications usage, but also to redistribute services and charges. Public dissatisfaction with these reallocations could recreate the political discord that stunted the early growth of the British telecommunications manufacturing sector, unless the new technology and regulatory institutions substantially alter the economic environment. More intense competition. rather than prospective changes of network ownership, seem to have improved the seem to have improved the manufacturing industry's performance in recent years.     

Toward a green revolution in Africa: what would it achieve,and what would it require?

The current global food crisis has reemphasized the costliness of Africa's failure to achieve food security and poverty reduction. The instrument by which other more successful developing countries achieved these outcomes was a “Green Revolution” in agriculture. While previous research has provided largely discursive appraisals of the viability of an African Green Revolution, this article adopts a more rigorous methodology to address that question. First, an economy‐wide multimarket model, augmented with existing poverty–growth elasticities, is developed to assess the likely impacts of a rapid acceleration in food production (of the kind witnessed in previous Green Revolutions) on food prices, consumption and demand, farmer revenue, and poverty. Our results suggest that a rapid growth in staple production, together with more integrated regional markets, would reduce food prices by roughly 20–40% for consumers and 10–20% for producers among the major crops. This translates into a large rise in farm revenues, annual agricultural growth rates of 6.5% or higher, broader income growth and food security, and over 70 million Africans being lifted out of poverty. The article concludes by emphasizing the kinds of fundamental policy actions and resources that would be required for achieving these outcomes.     

Testing for Persistence of Profits’ Differences Across Firms

We review the logic and implications underlying both static and dynamic models of competition, and associated tests of competitive effectiveness. Complications arising due to innovation, mergers and cyclical factors are discussed. Points raised in the theoretical discussion are illustrated with case histories and estimates for a number of US and UK companies. The empirical analysis tests a larger set of models than has been used in most previous work, and uses longer time series of company profits. We conclude that the patterns of profits observed in both countries are consistent with a larger and more complicated set of models of the competitive process than has been assumed until now, and that further work remains to be done in clarifying both why some firms are persistently profitable, and the nature of the ‘shocks’ that appear to produce structural breaks in the time series of companies’ profits.