Foreign exchange, fractional cointegration and the implied-realized volatility relation

Almost all relevant literature has characterized implied volatility as a biased predictor of realized volatility. This paper provides new time series techniques to assess the validity of this finding within a foreign exchange market context. We begin with the empirical observation that the fractional order of volatility is often found to have confidence intervals that span the stationary/non-stationary boundary. However, no existing fractional cointegration test has been shown to be robust to both regions. Therefore, a new test for fractional cointegration is developed and shown to be robust to the relevant orders of integration. Secondly, employing a dataset that includes the relatively new Euro markets, it is shown that implied and realized volatility are fractionally cointegrated with a slope coefficient of unity. Moreover, the non-standard asymptotic distribution of estimators when using fractionally integrated data is overcome by employing a bootstrap procedure in the frequency domain. Strikingly, tests then show that implied volatility is an unbiased predictor of realized volatility

Coordination Costs: A Drawback for Research Joint Ventures?

This is part of an Economics Discussion Series. It is also available: http://ideas.repec.org/p/lbo/lbowps/2006_3.html.We analyze a simple oligopoly model where firms can engage in cost- reducing R&D. We compare two R&D regimes: R&D competition and R&D cooperation where firms can enter in a Research Joint Venture (RJV). We introduce coordination costs for the RJV and examine how these affect the equilibrium outcomes. Further, we examine the ques- tion of the equilibrium versus optimal size of the RJV. For a given size of the RJV, its members decrease their own R&D as the anticipated coordination costs increase. This results in lower output and profits. On the contrary, the non-RJV firms increase their R&D investments in response to the fall in the RJV firms' R&D.We show that the per- formance of the RJV in terms of R&D investment, profit and welfare in relation to R&D competition is sensitive to the level of coordination costs. Furthermore, we show that, although the RJV as a whole may no longer conduct a unit of R&D at a lower cost compared to the in- dependent firm under the non-cooperative R&D regime, its members can still make savings on their own R&D expense through information sharing. Finally, we find that not only the equilibrium size becomes smaller as coordination costs increase, but the discrepancy between the equilibrium and optimal sizes is widening. One important message from our analysis is that by ignoring the coordination costs of oper- ating the RJV, the anticipated benefits or success of the cooperative project could have been grossly exaggerated