Regional and State Variation in Homeownership Rates; or If California's Home Prices Were as Low as Pennsylvania's Would its Ownership Rate be as High?

There are significant disparities in homeownership rates across the regions and states of the United States. The causes of these disparities are determined within a standard probit model of the individual homeownership decision where the micro-level observations are aggregated to the regional level. Factors which play a significant role at the individual level are evaluated for their ability to explain regional differentiation. The relative price of owning and renting plays a major role as do other market level determinants. Individual demographic characteristics are not as important with the exception of those related to the immigration and citizenship status of the household head.     

Finite Dimensional Affine Realisations of HJM Models in Terms of Forward Rates and Yields

Finite dimensional Markovian HJM term structure models provide ideal settings for the study of term structure dynamics and interest rate derivatives where the flexibility of the HJM framework and the tractability of Markovian models coexist. Consequently, these models became the focus of a series of papers including Carverhill (1994), Ritchken and Sankarasubramanian (1995), Bhar and Chiarella (1997), Inui and Kijima (1998), de Jong and Santa-Clara (1999), Björk and Svensson (2001) and Chiarella and Kwon (2001a). However, these models usually required the introduction of a large number of state variables which, at first sight, did not appear to have clear links to the market observed quantities, and the explicit realisations of the forward rate curve in terms of the state variables were unclear. In this paper, it is shown that the forward rate curves for these models are affine functions of the state variables, and conversely that the state variables in these models can be expressed as affine functions of a finite number of forward rates or yields. This property is useful, for example, in the estimation of model parameters. The paper also provides explicit formulae for the bond prices in terms of the state variables that generalise the formulae given in Inui and Kijima (1998), and applies the framework to obtain affine representations for a number of popular interest rate models.     

Central bank interventions and jumps in double long memory models of daily exchange rates

In this paper, we estimate ARFIMA–FIGARCH models for the major exchange rates (against the US dollar) which have been subject to direct central bank interventions in the last decades. We show that the normality assumption is not adequate due to the occurrence of volatility outliers and its rejection is related to these interventions. Consequently, we rely on a normal mixture distribution that allows for endogenously determined jumps in the process governing the exchange rate dynamics. This distribution performs rather well and is found to be important for the estimation of the persistence of volatility shocks. Introducing a time-varying jump probability associated to central bank interventions, we find that the central bank interventions, conducted in either a coordinated or unilateral way, induce a jump in the process and tend to increase exchange rate volatility.     

Cross-hedging foreign currency risk: Empirical evidence from an error correction model

In this article, the traditional price change hedge ratio estimation method is extended by applying the theory of cointegration in the case of cross-hedging of spot exchange risk of the Belgian franc (BF), the Italian lira (IL), and the Dutch guilder (NG) with U.S. Dollar Index futures contracts. Previous studies ignore the last period's equilibrium error and short-run deviations. The findings of this study indicate that the hedge ratio estimated by the error correction method is superior to that obtained from the traditional method, as evidenced by the likelihood ratio test and out-of-sample forecasts. Hedgers will be able to control the risk of their portfolios more effectively at a lower cost.     

我国金融工程发展的市场环境与制度框架

金融工程具有对风险的规避和放大效应。金融工程的发展不仅需要强大的技术手段支持,更需要政府从制度层面进行合理配置。本文分析了金融工程在经济运行中的负面作用,根据当前我国利率、汇率市场化改革的宏观环境,并结合当前国外金融制度建设的基本特征和我国基本国情,提出了我国金融工程发展的制度框架。其中,近期制度建设构想为:加强法规制度建设,优化金融环境,严防金融欺诈;加强监管机构管理,确保其独立性和公平性;加强二级市场管理建设。远期制度建设构想为:进一步强化对产品发行人、合作投资计划、市场中介机构和行业自律等方面的制度约束。     

当前人民币汇率制度选择的理论思考

任何汇率制度都只是实现经济目标的手段而不是目的,我们在各个时期选择的汇率制度应该是对我国经济发展最有利的制度。在现有的国际货币体系下,如果资本项目尚未开放,则理性的选择应该是固定汇率制度;如果资本项目已完全开放,则实行浮动汇率制是有效而保险的。对于中国这样一个资本账户部分开放的国家,现阶段重新回到真正意义上的有管理的浮动汇率制是必要的,也是可行的。     

汇率制度、资本流动与金融危机:理论和实证分析——东亚金融危机视角

20世纪90年代,几乎所有发生金融危机的国家当时都实行固定或钉住汇率制度。东亚金融危机爆发前,东亚各经济体大多实行钉住美元的相对固定汇率制,大量国际资本流入,本币严重高估,经常项目巨额逆差,宏观经济严重失衡。在汇率贬值的预期下,国际投机资本对东亚经济体货币发动攻击,大量资本流出,受攻击的经济体外汇储备耗尽,最终导致实际钉住美元的固定汇率制崩溃,金融危机爆发,蔓延成危及东亚乃至世界的金融危机。东亚金融危机的事实表明,金融危机、资本流动和汇率制度之间存在着密切关系。     

我国涉外企业外汇交易风险研究

随着世界经济逐步向全球一体化的方向发展以及我国对WTO相关条款的逐步履行,我国与其他国家的经济往来也变得更加频繁。更为重要的是,我国外汇管理体制改革的进一步深化和外汇市场的发展和完善,使得人民币汇率开始走向市场,汇率变动的频率和范围将大大增强。因此,在这一背景下,本文以科学性和前瞻性为指导原则,通过阐述我国涉外企业面临的外汇交易风险现状和问题,揭示这类企业加强外汇交易风险管理的必要性,在此基础上,来探讨外汇交易风险对我国涉外企业净利润的影响,最终结合我国外汇管理体制改革的实践,提出有效防范和规避外汇交易风险的建议和对策。     

可持续增长率与财务管理目标相关性分析

可持续增长率是企业现有财务资源所能够支持的销售收入的最大增长率,代表企业最适宜的增长速度。企业的财务管理目标是企业价值最大化,而决定企业价值的重要因素是由销售收入增长所带来的未来现金流量。企业以可持续增长率作为销售增长目标,有利于企业价值的持续增加;而将企业价值最大化作为财务管理目标又有利于企业的可持续增长,可持续增长率与财务管理目标密切相关。本文将以可持续增长率与财务管理目标的相关性作为研究起点,试图从财务管理目标的角度来进一步认识可持续长率。     

Valuing Mortgage Insurance Contracts in Emerging Market Economies

We develop a new option-based method for the valuation of mortgage insurance contracts in closed form in an economy where agents are risk neutral. While the proposed valuation method is general and can be used in any market, it may be particularly useful in emerging market economies where other existing methods may be either inappropriate or are too difficult to implement because of the lack of relevant data. As an application, we price a typical Serbian government-backed mortgage insurance contract.