Asymmetric volatility in the foreign exchange markets

We examine the presence or absence of asymmetric volatility in the exchange rates of Australian dollar (AUD), Euro (EUR), British pound (GBP) and Japanese yen (JPY), all against US dollar. Our investigation is based on a variant of the heterogeneous autoregressive realized volatility model, using daily realized variance and return series from 1996 to 2004. We find that a depreciation against USD leads to significantly greater volatility than an appreciation for AUD and GBP, whereas the opposite is true for JPY. Relative to volatility on days following a positive one-standard-deviation return, volatility on days following a negative one-standard-deviation return is higher by 6.6% for AUD, 6.1% for GBP, and 21.2% for JPY. The realized volatility of EUR appears to be symmetric. These results are robust to the removal of jump component from realized volatility and the sub-samplings defined by structural-changes. The asymmetry in AUD, GBP and JPY appears to be embedded in the continuous component of realized volatility rather than the jump component.     

Forecasting Stock Index Futures Price Volatility: Linear vs. Nonlinear Models

The study examines the relative ability of various models to forecast daily stock index futures volatility. The forecasting models that are employed range from naïve models to the relatively complex ARCH-class models. It is found that among linear models of stock index futures volatility, the autoregressive model ranks first using the RMSE and MAPE criteria. We also examine three nonlinear models. These models are GARCH-M, EGARCH, and ESTAR. We find that nonlinear GARCH models dominate linear models utilizing the RMSE and the MAPE error statistics and EGARCH appears to be the best model for forecasting stock index futures price volatility.     

Initial Margin Requirements, Volatility, and the Individual Investor: Insights from Japan

Initial margin requirements represent: (1) a cost impediment to the wealth constrained investor and (2) a potential way of mitigating excessive volatility. However, prior empirical research finds that margins are not an effective tool in reducing volatility. We consider the possibility that margins primarily affect certain stocks and investors. Specifically, we test whether margins affect individuals who, as a group, we believe to be the investors most affected when margin requirements change. Our initial empirical tests, however, do not support this contention.     

Likelihood-based specification analysis of continuous-time models of the short-term interest rate

An extensive collection of continuous-time models of the short-term interest rate is evaluated over data sets that have appeared previously in the literature. The analysis, which uses the simulated maximum likelihood procedure proposed by Durham and Gallant (2002), provides new insights regarding several previously unresolved questions. For single factor models, I find that the volatility, not the drift, is the critical component in model specification. Allowing for additional flexibility beyond a constant term in the drift provides negligible benefit. While constant drift would appear to imply that the short rate is nonstationary, in fact, stationarity is volatility-induced. The simple constant elasticity of volatility model fits weekly observations of the three-month Treasury bill rate remarkably well but is easily rejected when compared with more flexible volatility specifications over daily data. The methodology of Durham and Gallant can also be used to estimate stochastic volatility models. While adding the latent volatility component provides a large improvement in the likelihood for the physical process, it does little to improve bond-pricing performance.     

现代服务业：上海经济增长的新动力

本文通过经济增长弹性与就业弹性两个指标,对上海"十一五"规划中提出将优先发展的现代服务业及其主要子行业在上海经济增长中的作用进行了研究。分析认为目前上海第二产业与第三产业对经济的拉动力相当。而现代服务业的拉动力大于传统服务业。近年来,现代服务业的就业弹性均值较大,同时弹性的波动变化很大,这是上海GDP就业弹性近几年波动增大的主要原因。同时,通过对现代服务业中主要子行业的分析,发现现代服务业子行业间就业弹性的变动有着高度的正相关,这将增加现代服务业就业弹性波动对于上海GDP就业弹性波动的影响。     

教育、人力资本投资与经济增长——广东省和四川省的比较研究

人力资本在社会经济发展中具有基础性、战略性的作用。而教育是人力资本投资,提高人力资本质量的重要途径。本文利用生产函数分析比较广东省和四川省经济增长过程中人力资本投资对经济增长的产出弹性以及贡献率,实证了人力资本是经济增长的重要决定因素,并对教育和经济发展的关系做出较为全面的解释,对四川省的经济发展提出政策建议。     

Localized Innovation and Productivity Growth in Asia: An Intertemporal DEA Approach

Recent contributions to growth theory stress the importance of localized innovation for the performance of more backward countries. In earlier papers, analyses by means of DEA techniques confirmed this intuition. In this paper, we extend this type of analysis by relaxing the macroeconomic viewpoint adopted until now. New databases on output, labor and capital input in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors are developed for 40 countries. Using intertemporal DEA, it is found that changes in the global production frontier are localized at high levels of capital intensity. This result is stronger in agriculture than in manufacturing. Further, a decomposition of labor productivity growth in eight Asian countries for the period 1975–1992 into the effects of capital intensification, learning and innovation is made. The results suggest that there is a particular development path in which increases in capital intensity appear to be a prerequisite to benefit from international technology spillovers.JEL Classification: O14, O30, O40, O47     

Sequential Malmquist Indices of Productivity Growth: An Application to OECD Industrial Activities

The paper applies both the standard DEA methodology with contemporaneous frontiers and DEA with sequential frontiers to study changes in productivity and efficiency in manufacturing for a sample of eleven OECD countries over a twenty-year period. It uses a decomposition of the industrial Malmquist productivity indices to locate the sources of productivity growth: 'technical progress' and 'catching up.' The alternative indices are interrelated in a unifying framework that provides an interpretation to their difference. We argue that for manufacturing industries, in which technological regress is unlikely to occur, DEA with sequential frontiers provides a more adequate measure for the contribution of technical changes than standard DEA.     

增长机会与资本结构——对我国生物制药行业上市公司的实证研究

本文从公司战略及外部资本市场环境出发,对我国生物制药行业上市公司的增长机会与资本结构的相关性进行了实证研究,结果发现该行业上市公司增长机会与其债务水平呈显著负相关。     

Land use externalities, open space preservation, and urban sprawl

Parcel data on residential land conversion are used to investigate how land use externalities influence the rate of development and modify policies designed to manage urban growth and preserve open space. Several “smart growth” policies are found to significantly influence land conversion, including a development clustering policy that concentrates development and generates preserved open space. In addition to directly affecting a parcel's hazard rate of conversion, this policy is found to affect neighboring parcels' conversion by generating a positive open space externality that hastens their development. The implication that the clustering policy could generate a more sprawled pattern of development is explored using spatial simulation.