Developing the ECU Markets: Perspectives on Financial Innovation

The European Currency Unit (ECU) was officially introduced in March 1979 and has joined the ranks of innovative financial products that are rapidly appearing. The purpose of the paper is to explore the properties of the ECU and analyze those characteristics of the ECU, and products denominated in ECU, that offer value-added. Changes in communications and information technology, changes in the regulatory climate, and changes in the macroeconomic environment have generally encouraged recent financial innovations. We argue that the ECU has gained an edge on its component currencies because of its portfolio properties, its role in reducing transaction costs, the role of the European Monetary System, and trading factors peculiar to the ECU. Private participants should continue to gravitate toward the ECU as a useful vehicle to fulfill the services of money.

Analyzing the Accuracy of Foreign Exchange Advisory Services: Theory AndEvidence

With the introduction of floating exchange rates, the variability of unanticipated exchange rate changes has increased dramatically. A small forecasting industry has developed to provide information about future exchange rates. From an academic viewpoint, it is of interest to examine some of the statistical properties of these forecasts and to relate the forecast errors to other fundamental economic variables in a model with rational behavior. Second, from a more practical viewpoint, we would like to know if foreign exchange forecasts are useful to decision makers. The purpose of this paper is to provide an objective analysis which addresses some of the above questions for a large sample of forecasts. On the basis of the current research, we can draw several conclusions. First, most advisory service forecasts are not as accurate as the forward rate in terms of mean squared error. Second, judgmental forecasters are superior to econometric forecasters for short-term forecasts; the relationship is reversed for longer-term forecasts (one year). Third, two statistical tests indicate that the fraction of "correct" forecasts is significantly larger than what would be expected if the advisory services were only guessing at the direction of the future spot rate. In this sense, the forecast services appear to demonstrate expertise and usefulness. However, a full analysis of the risk-return opportunities available to advisory service users is still incomplete. It should be cautioned that if the forward rate contains a risk premium, then we expect advisory service models to beat the forward rate according to the tests we have outlined. In this case we must measure speculative returns relative to a risk measure. While advisory service forecasts may lead to profits, they may not be unusual after adjusting for risk.

Evidence on Financial Globalization and Crises: Interest Rate Parity

The Interest Rate Parity (IRP) relationship is one of the most relied upon indicators of financial globalization. IRP plays such a key role in global macroeconomic models that it is taken as a benchmark for perfect capital mobility between markets. In this paper, we review the theoretical basis and historical origins of the interest rate parity relationship. Empirical evidence supporting IRP became so wide-spread that by the start of the 21st century, economists and financial professionals essentially took IRP for granted. However, with the start of the global financial crisis in summer 2007 deviations from IRP increased significantly. Empirical evidence suggests that deviations can be linked to greater credit and counterparty risk among bank dealers, and a reduction in risk capital, as well as wider bid-ask spreads in currency markets. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, deviations from covered interest parity have increased considerably relative to a decade ago. Calibrating whether these deviations are efficient market violations, or simply a reflection of greater costs and risks, is a new challenge for financial economists

FX Counterparty Risk and Trading Activity in Currency Forward and Futures Markets

The Global Financial Crisis initiated a period of market turbulence and increased counterparty risk for financial institutions. Even though the Dodd-Frank Act is likely to exempt interbank foreign exchange trading from a central counterparty mandate, market participants have the option to trade currency futures on existing futures markets which standardize counterparty risks. Evidence for the period 2005-11 indicates that the market share of currency futures trading has grown relative to the pre-crisis period. This shift may be the result of a perceived increase in counterparty risk among banks, as well as changes in relative trading costs or changes in other institutional factors

Securities Activities of U.S. Commercial Bank Affiliates: Lessons from the International Financial Markets

An issue confronting U.S. policymakers is whether restrictions on securities activities of U.S. commercial banks ought to be abolished within a broader program of banking and financial market deregulation. The Euro-bond market offers an opportunity to examine the performance of a largely unregulated securities market and the behavior of U.S. commercial bank affiliates within that market. In this paper, we present evidence on the development and performance of the Euro-bond market over the last 20 years and then infer the likely consequences if a similar level of deregulation and competition were permitted in the United States. Data on the level of competition is presented along with an analysis of underwriting strategies and innovations that have been pursued in the market. The most serious criticisms concerning Euro-bond market operations--e.g. excessive spreads, conflicts of interest, and the Grey market--are reviewed. Overall, the evidence suggests that the Euro-bond market has experienced dynamic and vigorous growth, resulting in net benefits to both borrowers and lenders without exposing the financial instituitons to significant risks. Large U.S. companies regularly tap the Euro-bond market and capture some of these benefits. Allowing U.S. commercial bank affiliates to compete in the U.S. securities markets could make these benefits more certain and expand their availability toall firms with a minimal increase in risk to the safety and soundness of the banking system.

Financial Innovations in International Financial Markets

The central theme of this paper is that financial innovation has become a major force effecting the United States and other developed economies. The common features of the process include product innovation, securitization, liberalization of domestic financial market practices, globalization of markets, and increased competition among financial institutions. The paper offers a review of the product and process changes that have occurred in international financial markets, an analysis of the factors leading to these changes, and an examination of the implications for both financial market participants and macroeconomic policy makers.

Hunting for Alpha Hunters in the Currency Jungle

When equity markets are churning out double digit returns and fixed income markets offer normal yields or declining rates, institutional investors can be somewhat relaxed. They can earn reasonable absolute returns with conventional strategies. “Beta grazing” goes a long way without much need to look for exotica.1 Put differently, when traditional assets are likely to provide reasonable returns, the need for so called alternatives is less urgent. But when expected returns in equity markets seem slight and fixed income has been overrun by scared rabbits looking for safety or a small yield-to-maturity, things are different. What should institutional investors do to satisfy their need for more acceptable absolute rates of return?2 In such an environment, the marginal contribution of alpha hunting is far greater. It goes beyond the desire to diversity into the necessity to earn a critical level of absolute return

Are All Currency Managers Equal?

We present a post-sample study of currency fund managers showing that alpha hunters and especially alpha generators are more effective in providing diversification benefits for a global equity portfolio than currency managers who earn beta returns from popular style strategies or managers with high total returns regardless of their source. Our study is unusual in that we measure the alpha from currency investing using a simple factor model rather than based on total excess returns, that we use rankings of currency managers from an earlier published study and examine their performance truly out-of-sample, and finally that our data reflect actual trades and returns earned by these managers, so the data are not contaminated by the usual biases in hedge fund databases. Our results suggest that a factor model approach to analyzing currency fund returns, coupled with the revealed degree of alpha and beta persistence in our data, offer institutional investors with large equity exposure a useful tool for improving their performance

Underpricing of New Equity Offerings by Privatized Firms: An International Test

In this paper, we study a large sample of 507 privatization offerings from 39 countries over the period 1979-1996. Our objectives are twofold. First, we document the extent of short-run underpricing of these privatization offerings and measure their variation across countries, industries, and years, as well as drawing comparisons to private company IPOs. Second, we test alternative explanations of the determinants of short-run underpricing drawing on various models of maximizing behavior by underwriters, augmented by variables that proxy for national political objectives. Overall, we find support for elements of asymmetric information theory, investor sentiment theory and the reputation building hypothesis. With the exception of the Gini coefficient, our political proxy variables are typically not significant. Thus to a significant degree, the investment banking strategies believed to characterize IPOs of private companies in industrial countries may also play a role in the IPO strategies of state-owned-enterprises in both industrial and lesser developed economies

Is There Skill or Alpha in Currency Investing?

In this paper, we provide an overview of the main features of active currency management programs, highlighting the mandates and the types of trading strategies that are often used. The traditional benchmark used to measure skill or alpha in currency investing is that the expected excess rate of return is zero. We offer an alternative standard where the expected rate of return is related to naive style factors based on strategies that an investor could adopt assuming no special expertise. We review empirical evidence on the performance of both individual currency fund managers and indices of managers using the alternative benchmark. We find that a large percentage of variation in currency fund returns can be attributed to style indices. As a result, performance measures and rankings of currency funds may vary greatly depending on the benchmark used. We review related empirical evidence on fund management styles and survivorship and discuss the implications for currency management strategy and setting currency fund management fees