Permanent trading impacts and bond yields

We analyze four years of transaction data for euro-area sovereign bonds traded on the MTS electronic platforms. In order to measure the informational content of trading activity, we estimate the permanent price response to trades. We find not only strong evidence of information asymmetry in sovereign bond markets, but we also show the relevance of information asymmetry in explaining the cross-sectional variations of bond yields across a wide range of bond maturities and countries. Our results confirm that trades of more recently issued bonds and longer maturity bonds have a greater permanent effect on prices. We compare the price impact of trades for bonds across different maturity categories and find that trades of French and German bonds have the highest long-term price impact in the short maturity class whereas trades of German bonds have the highest permanent price impacts in the long maturity class. More importantly, we study the cross-section of bond yields and find that after controlling for conventional factors, investors demand higher yields for bonds with larger permanent trading impact. Interestingly, when investors face increased market uncertainty, they require even higher compensation for information asymmetry

Trade Flows, Exchange Rate Uncertainty and Financial Depth: Evidence from 28 Emerging Countries

We investigate the effects of real exchange rate uncertainty and financial depth on manufactures exports from 28 emerging economies to the North and South over 1978-2005. We estimate a dynamic panel model using system GMM approach and show that for the majority of countries in our sample exchange rate uncertainty affects both South-South and South-North trade negatively. Furthermore, for several cases we discover that this effect is unidirectional, that is South-South or South-North. In addition, we find that while financial depth plays a trade-enhancing role, exchange rate shocks can negate this effect. We also show that trade among developing economies is likely to enhance export growth

Data dilemmas in forecasting European office market rents

This paper uses data provided by three major real estate advisory firms to investigate the level and pattern of variation in the measurement of historic real estate rental values for the main European office centres. The paper assesses the extent to which the data providing organizations agree on historic market performance in terms of returns, risk and timing and examines the relationship between market maturity and agreement. The analysis suggests that at the aggregate level and for many markets, there is substantial agreement on direction, quantity and timing of market change. However, there is substantial variability in the level of agreement among cities. The paper also assesses whether the different data sets produce different explanatory models and market forecast. It is concluded that, although disagreement on the direction of market change is high for many market, the different data sets often produce similar explanatory models and predict similar relative performance

Cancellation and Uncertainty Aversion on Limit Order Books

This paper models limit order books where each trader is uncertain of the underlying distribution in the asset's value to others. If this uncertainty is rapidly resolved, eeting limit orders are submitted and quickly cancelled. This enhances liquidity supply, but leaves intact established comparative statics results on spreads. However, risk neutral liquidity suppliers are averse to persistent uncertainty due to concavity in the function describing limit order utility, and spreads widen. This helps explain wide spreads in the morning. The model describes traders who in equilibrium correctly anticipate market orders' endogenous stochastic intensities. It highlights how limit orders queue for execution.market microstructure, limit order book, fleeting orders, order cancellation.

Dynamic Trading and Asset Prices: Keynes vs. Hayek

We investigate the dynamics of prices, information and expectations in a competitive, noisy, dynamic asset pricing equilibrium model with long-term investors. We argue that the fact that prices can score worse or better than consensus opinion in predicting the fundamentals is a product of endogenous short-term speculation. For a given, positive level of residual payoff uncertainty, if noise trade displays low persistence rational investors act like market makers, accommodate the order flow, and prices are farther away from fundamentals compared to consensus. This defines a “Keynesian” region; the complementary region is “Hayekian” in that rational investors chase the trend and prices are systematically closer to fundamentals than average expectations. The standard case of no residual uncertainty and noise trading following a random walk is on the frontier of the two regions and identifies the set of deep parameters for which rational investors abide by Keynes’ dictum of concentrating on an asset “long term prospects and those only.” The analysis explains how accommodation and trend chasing strategies differ from momentum and reversal phenomena because of the different information sets that investors and an outside observer have.efficient market hypothesis, long and short-term trading, average expectations, higher order beliefs, over-reliance on public information, opaqueness, momentum, reversal

The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks in Emerging Economies

A recent strand of research proposes that sudden jumps in uncertainty generate rapid drops and recoveries in real macroeconomic variables that drive the business cycle. Using an empirical model, we find substantial heterogeneity in the reactions to these shocks across countries. In comparison to the U.S. and other developed countries, emerging economies suffer much more severe falls in investment and private consumption following an exogenous uncertainty shock, take significantly longer to recover, and do not experience a subsequent overshoot in activity. We provide evidence that the dynamics of investment and consumption are correlated with the depth of financial markets. Once we control for the potential role of credit constraints, we find that investment and consumption dynamics in emerging economies are similar to those in developed economies. In this context, monetary and fiscal policy actions that alleviate the impact of credit constraints facing firms and households may reduce the impact of uncertainty shocks in these economies.

Inflation and corporate investment – a critical survey

The analysis of inflation’s effect on investment can contribute to a deeper understanding of the benefits of a monetary policy oriented towards price stability. It can also help conduct such a policy effectively. We begin with a review of conclusions about the inflation-investment relationship that can be drawn from traditional monetary models with exogenous growth and no market imperfections. As these conclusions are ambiguous, models of this type could lead economic decision-makers to fail to take proper account of inflation’s impact on investment. We then survey research which, contrary to monetary exogenous growth models, takes account of market imperfections such as the asymmetry of information, uncertainty and nominal rigidities in the tax system. The analysis of the significance of these imperfections for the direction and magnitude of the relationship between inflation and investment forms the bulk of the article. We highlight, on the one hand, the key assumptions of the particular theories (and whether they are in keeping with stylized facts), and, on the other hand, the difficulties that empirical research faces when trying to verify the conclusions from these theories. Finally, we offer some conclusions on the basis of the conducted survey.investment, inflation, monetary growth models, asymmetry of information, uncertainty, taxes

Data Uncertainty in Real Estate Forecasting

The rapid expansion of the TMT sector in the late 1990s and more recent growing regulatory and corporate focus on business continuity and security have raised the profile of data centres. Data centres offer a unique blend of occupational, physical and technological characteristics compared to conventional real estate assets. Limited trading and heterogeneity of data centres also causes higher levels of appraisal uncertainty. In practice, the application of conventional discounted cash flow approaches requires information about a wide range of inputs that is difficult to derive from limited market signals or estimate analytically. This paper outlines an approach that uses pricing signals from similar traded cash flows is proposed. Based upon ‘the law of one price’, the method draws upon the premise that two identical future cash flows must have the same value now. Given the difficulties of estimating exit values, an alternative is that the expected cash flows of data centre are analysed over the life cycle of the building, with corporate bond yields used to provide a proxy for the appropriate discount rates for lease income. Since liabilities are quite diverse, a number of proxies are suggested as discount and capitalisation rates including indexed-linked, fixed interest and zero-coupon bonds. Although there are rarely assets that have identical cash flows and some approximation is necessary, the level of appraiser subjectivity is dramatically reduced.