Tropical bubbles : asset prices in Latin America, 1980-2001

The authors test for the existence of asset price bubbles in Latin America in 1980-2001, focusing mainly on stock prices. Based on unit root and cointegration tests, they find that they cannot reject the hypothesis of bubbles. They arrive at the same conclusion using Froot and Obstfeld's intrinsic bubbles model. To examine empirical regularities of these bubble episodes in the region, the authors identify periods of significant stock price overvaluation. They quantify the relative importance of different factors that determine the probability of bubble occurrence, focusing on the contrast between the country-specific variables and the common external factors. They include as country-specific variables both the level and the volatility of domestic credit growth, the volatility of asset returns, the capital flows to each country, and the terms of trade. As common external variables, they consider the degree of asset overvaluation in the U.S. stock and real estate markets and the term spread of U.S. Treasury securities. To quantitatively assess the relative importance of each factor, they estimate a logit model for a panel of five Latin American countries from 1985 to 2001. In general, the authors find that the marginal probabilities of common and country-specific variables are of roughly the same order of magnitude. This finding contrasts with those of previous studies that real asset returns in Latin America are dominated by local factors. Finally, the authors explore the main channels through which asset prices affect real economic activity, with the most important being the balance sheet effect and its impact on bank lending. They show how the allocation of bank lending across different sectors responded sensitively to real estate prices during the boom years in countries that experienced banking crises. Thus asset price bubbles have long-lasting effects in the financial sector and, through this channel, on growth. Another channel through which asset prices-particularly stock market prices-affect long-run growth is through their effect on investment. The authors find a strong positive association between stock prices and investment and a negative effect of stock price volatility on investment. An additional motive for the central bank to monitor asset prices is the general coincidence of the crash episodes identified by the authors with currency crises in the region in the past two decades.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Financial Intermediation,Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Environmental Economics&Policies

Price volatility forecasts for agricultural commodities:an application of volatility models,option implieds and composite approaches forfutures prices of corn and wheat

There has been substantial research effort aimed to forecast futures price return volatilities of financial and commodity assets. Some part of this research focuses on the performance of time-series models (in particular ARCH models) versus option implied volatility models. A significant part of the literature related to this topic shows that volatility forecast accuracy is not easy to estimate regardless of the forecasting model applied. This paper examines the volatility accuracy of volatility forecast models for the case of corn and wheat futures price returns. The models applied here are a univariate GARCH, a multivariate ARCH (the BEKK model), an option implied and a composite forecast model. The composite model includes time-series (historical) and option implied volatility forecasts. The results show that the option implied model is superior to the historical models in terms of accuracy and that the composite forecast model was the most accurate one (compared to the alternative models) having the lowest mean-square-errors. Given these findings it is recommended to use a composite forecast model if both types of data are available i.e. the time-series (historical) and the option implied. In addition, the results of this paper are consistent to that part of the literature that emphasizes the difficulty on being accurate about forecasting asset price return volatility. This is because the explanatory power (coefficient of determination) calculated in the forecast regressions were relatively low.Agricultural commodities, BEKK model, multivariate GARCH, Samuelson hypothesis, theory of storage.

An Index of Financial Stress for Canada

The authors develop an index of financial stress for the Canadian financial system. Stress is defined as the force exerted on economic agents by uncertainty and changing expectations of loss in financial markets and institutions. It is a continuous variable with a spectrum of values, where extreme values are called financial crises. Information about financial stress is extracted from a wide array of financial variables using several techniques, including factor analysis, econometric benchmarking, and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) modelling. An internal Bank of Canada survey is used to condition the choice of variables and to evaluate their ability to reflect the responses to the survey regarding highly stressful financial events. The authors show that alternative measures of financial crises suggested by the literature do not accurately reflect the results of the survey, while several measures developed in this paper do reflect them.Financial institutions; Financial markets

Exchange Rates and U.S. Direct Investment into Latin America

This paper analyzes the impact of exchange rate levels and exchange rate uncertainty on U.S. foreign direct investment into Latin America. By decomposing exchange rate uncertainty into temporary (short-run) and permanent (long-run) components, we further explore whether the nature of uncertainty matters. Our empirical findings support the view that exchange rate uncertainty has a negative impact on U.S. investment flows into Latin America. Moreover, it is the persistency in uncertainty rather than transitory uncertainty that mostly deters foreign investment. In contrast, investors do not appear to be affected by discrete movements in exchange rate levels.

Essays on Return and Volatility on World Stock Markets

This research is mainly focused on investigating volatility dynamics of world stock returns. More specifically, the main goal is to capture co-movements and analyze dynamic transmission mechanisms of volatility of stock returns across the world. Understanding the mechanisms linking international equity markets is important for not only policymakers but also fund managers who make investment decisions based on the international risk diversification. But existence of co-movements in world stock markets is lack of evidence in the existing literature. Chapter 1 gives a detailed literature review and clarifies the marginal contribution of this research. The chapter begins with introducing the importance of related research on this topic. Secondly, a number of influential literatures on the related field are reviewed. It shows that the existing literature is not able to capture a clear trend of co-movement across world stock markets. The problem could be resulted from model selections, data construction, and sample sizes and etc. Those questions are addressed in this dissertation research. In Chapter 2, co-movements across worldwide stock markets are investigated. A dynamic factor model is designed to decompose stock return volatility into three orthogonal factors: the world factor, the regional factor and the local factor. The three factors are assumed to be well suited for explaining all the variation of volatility. Fourteen countries are included in the empirical study in order to cover both developed and emerging stock markets. The historical volatility growth decomposition is conducted to analyze contributions made by different factors to the volatility growth for each market. The results show that there exist co-movements which are able to account for more than 50% of variation of volatility for most of countries. The world factor turns out to be significant for North American and Latin American markets; nevertheless the regional factor is important for Europe and Asia. In Chapter 3, a modified dynamic factor model is conducted to investigate spill-over effects between different stock markets or regions. It begins with examining the dominant position of the U.S. in world stock markets, followed by analysis on the effect of U.S. stock market on Asian markets. Linkage between Asian stock markets and Latin American markets are also investigated. Moreover, the author extended the time horizon and adjusted the sample of countries in order to examine effects of financial integration on world stock markets. The results show that the dominance of the U.S. stock market in world stock markets has been getting weaker since international financial markets became more integrated. Emerging stock markets have become more independent of developed markets after financial globalization

The impact of macroeconomic leading indicators on inventory management

Forecasting tactical sales is important for long term decisions such as procurement and informing lower level inventory management decisions. Macroeconomic indicators have been shown to improve the forecast accuracy at tactical level, as these indicators can provide early warnings of changing markets while at the same time tactical sales are sufficiently aggregated to facilitate the identification of useful leading indicators. Past research has shown that we can achieve significant gains by incorporating such information. However, at lower levels, that inventory decisions are taken, this is often not feasible due to the level of noise in the data. To take advantage of macroeconomic leading indicators at this level we need to translate the tactical forecasts into operational level ones. In this research we investigate how to best assimilate top level forecasts that incorporate such exogenous information with bottom level (at Stock Keeping Unit level) extrapolative forecasts. The aim is to demonstrate whether incorporating these variables has a positive impact on bottom level planning and eventually inventory levels. We construct appropriate hierarchies of sales and use that structure to reconcile the forecasts, and in turn the different available information, across levels. We are interested both at the point forecast and the prediction intervals, as the latter inform safety stock decisions. Therefore the contribution of this research is twofold. We investigate the usefulness of macroeconomic leading indicators for SKU level forecasts and alternative ways to estimate the variance of hierarchically reconciled forecasts. We provide evidence using a real case study

Systemic risk: A survey

This paper develops a broad concept of systemic risk, the basic economic concept for the understanding of financial crises. It is claimed that any such concept must integrate systemic events in banking and financial markets as well as in the related payment and settlement systems. At the heart of systemic risk are contagion effects, various forms of external effects. The concept also includes simultaneous financial instabilities following aggregate shocks. The quantitative literature on systemic risk, which was evolving swiftly in the last couple of years, is surveyed in the light of this concept. Various rigorous models of bank and payment system contagion have now been developed, although a general theoretical paradigm is still missing. Direct econometric tests of bank contagion effects seem to be mainly limited to the United States. Empirical studies of systemic risk in foreign exchange and security settlement systems appear to be non-existent. Moreover, the literature surveyed reflects the general difficulty to develop empirical tests that can make a clear distinction between contagion in the proper sense and joint crises caused by common shocks, rational revisions of depositor or investor expectations when information is asymmetric ('information-based' contagion) and 'pure' contagion as well as between 'efficient' and 'inefficient' systemic events. JEL Classification: G21, G29, G12, E49banking crises, Contagion, currency crises, financial markets, financial stability, payment and settlement systems, systemic risk

The Complexities of Financial Risk Management and Systemic Risks

Risk-management systems in financial institutions have come under increasing scrutiny in light of the current financial crisis, resulting in calls for improvements and an increased role for regulators. Yet such objectives miss the intricacy at the heart of the risk-management process. This article outlines the complexity inherent in any modern risk-management system, which arises because there are shortcuts in the theoretical models that risk managers need to be aware of, as well as the difficulties in sensible calibration of model parameters. The author suggests that prudential regulation of such systems should focus on failures within the financial firm and in the market interactions between firms and reviews possible strategies that can improve the performance of risk management and microprudential regulatory practice.