Efficient Markets Hypothesis and the Emerging Capital Market in Sri Lanka: Evidence from the Colombo Stock Exchange – A Note

The behaviour of stock prices on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) is examined with a view to determine its consistency with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH). Runs, Autocorrelation and Cointegration tests are applied to daily, weekly and monthly CSE index data for the period of January 1991–November 1996. Results of Runs, Correlation and Cointegration tests overwhelmingly reject the serial independence hypothesis, leading to the conclusion that the behaviour of stock prices in the Colombo Stock Exchange is not consistent with the weak form of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis. Tests of the-day-of-the-week-effect, however, show that there is no evidence of such a phenomenon on the Colombo Stock Exchange stock prices. Results of the tests of the-month-of-the-year-effect lead to the conclusion that CSE prices do not display any month-specific behaviour.     

Commodity currencies

This paper looks at real exchange rate behavior by focusing on three OECD economies (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) where primary commodities constitute a significant share of their exports. For Australia and New Zealand especially, we find that the US dollar price of their commodity exports (generally exogenous to these small economies) has a strong and stable influence on their floating real rates, with the magnitude of the effects consistent with predictions of standard theoretical models. However, after controlling for commodity price shocks, there is still a purchasing power parity puzzle in the residual. The results here are relevant to developing commodity-exporting countries as they liberalize their capital markets and move towards floating exchange rates.     

Real exchange rate targeting and macroeconomic instability

Using an optimizing model of a small open economy, this paper studies the macroeconomic effects of PPP rules whereby the government increases the devaluation rate when the real exchange rate—defined as the price of tradables in terms of nontradables—is below its long-run level and reduces the devaluation rate when the real exchange rate is above its long-run level. The paper shows that the mere existence of such a rule can generate aggregate instability due to self-fulfilling expectations. The result is shown to obtain in both flexible- and sluggish-price environments.     

Price Rigidity and the Selection of the Exchange Rate Regime

We evaluate and qualify Friedman's, 1953, “case for flexible exchange rates” in the presence of sticky prices in a two country model. We find that a flexible regime performs indeed better when the degree of nominal price rigidity is high while a bilateral peg does better when prices are fairly flexible. This result obtains independent of whether monetary policy is activistic or not and is mostly due to the negative relationship between employment and productivity shocks when prices are relatively sluggish (Gali, 1999). A unilateral peg tends to produce the lowest level of world welfare but it sometimes represents the best monetary arrangement for the pegger. JEL Classification Numbers: E32, E52, F33, F42     

On the forecastability of share prices on the Viennese stock exchange

In this paper the Viennese stock exchange data are analysed by using ARMA and GARCH technology. After using AIC and BIC for estimating the linear structure of the time series, to the resulting innovations a GARCH(1,1) model is fit. The resulting residuals are then tested for serial independence and constancy of its distribution to check whether the models are reasonable. Main result is that the residuals of this ARMA-GARCH(1,1)-model are reasonably iid (which is checked by BDS and classical independence tests) for index data and significantly less well-behaved for stock data. Second, there is considerable autocorrelation in the data (especially in the Viennese indices WBK and ATX) which can be exploited even with 1.25% transaction costs (which is checked by a posteriori analysis of a strategy which exploits an underlying time-varying AR(1) model), however, much higher profit can be made with 0.5% transaction costs. Furthermore, the same techniques are applied to US Standard & Poor 500 index and the results for both data sets are compared giving the result that the US-market looks much more mature than the Viennese one.Financial Support by the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, and the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Vienna, Grant P 9176 is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is a slightly abbreviated version of the Research Report No. 135 by the same authors (see References), which contains many detailed plots of the results.     

项目总控的应用及其信息处理规划

随着国内大型建设项目的增多，大型建设项目的实施遇到诸多问题，其原因主要是业主对项目的控制能力不强，从而导致大型建设项目不能实现其质量、进度、投资等预期目标，甚至会导致整个项目的失败，项目总控模式的应用很大程度地解决了这一问题，另外，由于信息处理是项目总控的主要工作，因此，本也讨论了项目总控模式下的信息处理规划。     

本币升值对股市的影响——基于日本的经验研究

作为一国经济晴雨表的股票市场,不可避免地受到汇率变动的影响。文章以日本为例,分析本币升值对股市的影响。分析表明,本币升值在短期内推动本国股市繁荣,往往伴生股市泡沫,但继续升值预期一旦消失,股市往往出现大幅度下跌。因此,在人民币持续升值的背景下,必须根据我国的实际情况慎重考虑其对股市的影响。     

现代企业职业生涯管理的新视角——内部营销

文章在现有职业管理理论问题分析的基础上提出引入营销视角的必要性,并从营销的核心概念——交换和满足需求两个层面分析了营销式职业管理的可行性,最后对市场营销的方法体系在职业管理中的运用做了初步探讨。     

近10年日本宏观经济的理论分析与展望

近10年日本经济停滞不前，一方面对外经济状况不佳：日元对美元汇率技术下跌。且不断加剧；出口增长放缓，贸易顺差连续下滑，另一方面国内宏观经济状况严峻；失业率不断上升，内需不振；通货紧缩逐步加深；工业增长持续低迷，工业生产与效益下降，究其原因，用内外均衡模型理论分析得出，日本经济没有达到均衡的0点，内外均衡遭到了破坏，而展望今后的日本经济和日元走势，基于日本财政状况的恶化及货币政策的失效，估计还不会导致资本的大量外流。也不会对资本流动产生重要的影响，而结构改革也将可能引致日元升值。     

粉煤灰合成4(A)沸石最佳工艺条件的研究

研究了利用粉煤灰合成4A沸石的工艺过程，通过正交试验考察了钠铝摩尔比、硅铝摩尔比、水钠摩尔比、晶化温度和晶化时间不同条件的变化对所合成样品钙交换能力的影响，选定了最佳工艺条件，合成的样品具有良好的钙离子交换能力和结晶度。