The Status of RMB Financial Products of Commercial Banks in China: From the Perspective of Homogeneity

With the rapid development of commercial bank financial services in China, some problems arise in the process. This paper focuses on the widely concerned issue of homogeneity, basing on the classification of products, and takes the data from 2007 to 2013 about RMB financial products issued by 17 commercial banks as the sample to analyze the product type, minimum amount, investment period and returns of these products. Reasons for homogeneity will be discussed and recommendations in the aspects of customers, products, marketing channels and financial managers will be made to solve this problem

European mortgage market: An overview 1992-2003

The development of the European mortgage market, its current situation in terms of volume, growth, prices, interest rates and new products, and an analysis of mortgage integration are the focus of this paper. The recent creation of the European Mortgage Finance Agency (EMFA), as an attempt to build a single European securitization market, is an important step toward integration within the wider goal of EU financial integration. Obstacles to integration, potential members of the EMFA, and its main goals and advantages are discussed in the forward-looking section of this paper. In addition, the paper deals with three important aspects of the EU mortgage market, taken as a whole: • How it operates. Other aspects considered include transaction costs, transparency requirements affecting credit institutions (European Code of Conduct), and a classification of mortgage products on the market. • Refinancing in Europe (as compared to the USA). The secondary market for the funding of financial institutions, in relation to mortgage bonds and mortgage-backed securities, including explanations of their main characteristics and the differences between them. • How European mortgage markets influence the economy and how they may affect private investment and consumption, household debt (which continues to increase each year), and the performance of financial institutions (high competitiveness) are other important points considered.European mortgage market integration; Growth; Interest rate applied; Transaction costs;

Features of the Islamic financial system

Розглянуто поняття та основні особливості ісламської фінансової системи. Наведена класифікація ісламських банківських продуктів та послуг. Проаналізована динаміка обсягів поширення ісламської фінансової системи. Рассмотрены понятие и основные особенности исламской финансовой системы. Приведенна классификация исламских банковских продуктов и услуг. Проанализирована динамика объемов распространение исламской финансовой системы. Consider the concept and main features of the Islamic financial system. The classification of Islamic banking products and services. The dynamics of the volume of distribution of Islamic financial system

New series of the Spanish foreign sector, 1850-2000.

This paper offers new series on the evolution of the foreign sector of the Spanish economy in the period between 1821 and 2001. Besides the classical series of the trade balance in current, constant and gold pesetas, it incorporates the series of incomes, payments and balance of the main entries of the Current Account and Capital Balance, along with a special treatment of the tourist series since the 1920s. As a complement to the analysis of the foreign sector, new indicators of trade, financial and customs tariffs protection and degree of openness of the Spanish economy have been included together with new homogeneous estimations of the distribution by products and the revealed comparative advantage (according to a systematic aggregate following the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC. 2 (UN (1985) and GATT (1986)) as well as the geographical distribution of exports and imports (following the UN Classification (INE (2002)).Foreign Sector; Foreign Trade; Accuracy Foreign Trade; Spanish New Series;

The high-yield segment of the corporate bond market: a diffusion modelling approach for the United States, the United Kingdom and the euro area

This study empirically examines the development of the high-yield segment of the corporate bond market in the United States, as a pioneer country, and the United Kingdom and the euro area, as later adopting countries. Estimated diffusion models show for the United States a significant pioneer influence factor and autonomous speed of diffusion. The latter is found to be higher in Europe than in the United States as also macroeconomic factors are considered. The high-yield bond diffusion pattern is significantly affected by financing need variables, e.g. leverage buy-outs, mergers and acquisitions, and industrial production growth, and return or financing cost variables, e.g. stock market return and the spread between the yield on speculative-grade and BBB-rated investment-grade bonds. These findings suggest that the diffusion of new financial products depends on the macroeconomic environment and can be quickly in case of the diffusion from a pioneer country to later adopting countries. JEL Classification: G32, E44diffusion models, financial innovation, high-yield bond market

Case study in six sigma methadology : manufacturing quality improvement and guidence for managers

This article discusses the successful implementation of Six Sigma methodology in a high precision and critical process in the manufacture of automotive products. The Six Sigma define–measure–analyse–improve–control approach resulted in a reduction of tolerance-related problems and improved the first pass yield from 85% to 99.4%. Data were collected on all possible causes and regression analysis, hypothesis testing, Taguchi methods, classification and regression tree, etc. were used to analyse the data and draw conclusions. Implementation of Six Sigma methodology had a significant financial impact on the profitability of the company. An approximate saving of US$70,000 per annum was reported, which is in addition to the customer-facing benefits of improved quality on returns and sales. The project also had the benefit of allowing the company to learn useful messages that will guide future Six Sigma activities

Information, Overconfidence and Trading: Do the Sources of Information Matter?

We investigate how the strength of the positive association between frequency of trading and information acquisition is dependent on investors’ self-confidence and on the sources of information used by investors. Our results confirm that the more frequently individual investors invest in information, the more they trade in financial products. Our results also confirm previous findings that overconfident investors, who show a better than average bias, trade more frequently. In this paper, we add to this literature by investigating if the strong and positive relationship between investment in information and intensity of trading in financial assets is sensitive to the sources of information used by investors, and if this influence is different for overconfident and non-overconfident investors. We conclude that overconfident investors trade more frequently when they collect information directly using specialized sources and that nonoverconfident investors trade less frequently when they use professional advice from the bank/account manager.Information, overconfidence, investor behaviour, trading, sources of information Classification-G11, G14, D83

Keeping Tabs on Financial Innovation: Product Identifiers in Consumer Financial Regulation

The financial crisis of 2008 gave rise to renewed discussion about whether financial innovations should undergo higher scrutiny for potential harm and, if so, what type? In this Article, the authors propose a new system for monitoring financial innovations through a system of registration, data collection and analysis using unique product identifiers. Creating product identifiers would increase monitoring abilities substantially at relatively low cost by facilitating the linkage of separate databases. The assignment of unique product identifiers would also minimize errors in the identification and classification of different financial products. These identifiers would be available to both the government and the public to harness outside analysis by independent researchers in order to improve the monitoring of financial risk

Pricing and Hedging Illiquid Energy Derivatives:an Application to the JCC Index

In this paper we discuss a simple econometric strategy for pricing and hedging illiquid financial products, such as the Japanese crude oil cocktail (JCC) index, the most popular OTC energy derivative in Japan. First, we review the existing literature for computing optimal hedge ratios (OHR) and we propose a critical classification of the existing approaches. Second, we compare the empirical performance of different econometric models (namely, regression models in price-levels, price first differences, price returns, as well as error correction and autoregressive distributed lag models) in terms of their computed OHR using monthly data on the JCC over the period January 2000-January 2006. Third, we illustrate and implement a procedure to cross-hedge and price two different swaps on the JCC: a one-month swap and a three-month swap with a variable oil volume. We explain how to compute a bid/ask spread and to construct the hedging position for the JCC swap. Fourth, we evaluate our swap pricing scheme with backtesting and rolling regression techniques. Our empirical findings show that it is not necessary to use sophisticated econometric techniques, since the price level regression model permits to compute a more reliable optimal hedge ratio relative to its competing alternatives.Hedging Models, Cross-Hedging, Energy Derivatives, Illiquid Financial Products, Commodity Markets, JCC Price Index