Assessing Central Bank credibility during the ERM crises: comparing option and spot market-based forecasts

Financial markets embed expectations of central bank policy into asset prices. This paper compares two approaches that extract a probability density of market beliefs. The first is a simulatedmoments estimator for option volatilities described in Mizrach (2002); the second is a new approach developed by Haas, Mittnik and Paolella (2004a) for fat-tailed conditionally heteroskedastic time series. In an application to the 1992-93 European Exchange Rate Mechanism crises, that both the options and the underlying exchange rates provide useful information for policy makers. JEL Klassifikation: G12, G14, F31

The next tick on Nasdaq: Does level II information matter?

The Nasdaq stock market provides information about buying and selling interest in what is called the Level II display. Using a bivariate VAR model of trades and quotes, I assess the effect of Level II prices and depths on short-run quote dynamics. I also determine the influence of individual market makers and electronic networks and find evidence of strategic behavior. Finally, I produce a set of dynamic market price responses to buy and sell orders, and I find that these estimates vary with standard measures of liquidity

Did Option Prices Predict the ERM Crises?

Option prices seem to behave in ways inconsistent with the Black-Scholes model. Implied volatility varies with the strike price in a parabolic shape that is often called the volatility 'smile.' My objective in this paper is to identify implied probability distributions that might explain this anomaly. I develop a simulated method of moments estimation procedure. I parameterize the underlying exchange rate process as a mixture of log-normals, price the options using Monte Carlo methods, and compare these simulated price 'moments' to the market data. This process switching model appears to be quite promising in explaining the volatility smile. Applying this to the ERM data, I find that the probability of a devaluation in the British Pound almost doubled before it withdrew from the ERM. This risk becomes statistically significant on September 15, 1992, only one day prior to the crisis though. The French Franc crisis of July-August 1993 appears to have been better anticipated. By July 20, 1993, the model predicts with 95% confidence that the Franc is going to be devalued

A Video Interview of Buz Brock

This article is a video presentation of an interview with Buz Brock at the 12th SNDE conference in Atlanta Georgia on March 12, 2004. The interview includes 15 questions on topics ranging from nonlinear dynamics, ecological modeling, and heterogenous agents

A Simple Nonparametric Test for Independence

A stationary stochastic process is defined to be locally independent if it eventually becomes independent of pastrealizations. I develop a simple nonparametric test for this condition. Size and power comparisons favor this statistic over the one proposed by Brock, Dechert and Scheinkman (1987) in samples under 250 observations

Mean Reversion in EMS Exchange Rates

Time series evidence on exchange rates has been unable to reject the random walk hypothesis. A simple structural model that accounts for target zone nonlinearities provides conclusive evidence of mean reversion in EMS exchange rates

When did the options market in Enron lose its' smirk?

The Enron Corporation went from a $65 billion dollar market capitalization to bankruptcy in just 16 months. Using statistical techniques for extracting the implied probability distributions built into option prices, I examine the market's expectation of Enron's risk of collapse. I find that the smart money remained far too optimistic about the stock until just weeks before their bankruptcy filing

The microstructure of the U.S. treasury market

This article discusses the microstructure of the U.S. Treasury securities market. Treasury securities are nominally riskless debt instruments issued by the U.S. government. Microstructural analysis is a field of economics/finance that examines the roles played by heterogenous agents, institutional detail, and asymmetric information in the trading process. The article describes types of Treasury issues; stages of the Treasury market; the major players, including the role of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the interdealer brokers; the structure of both the spot and futures markets; the findings of the seasonality/announcement and order book literature; and research on price discovery. We conclude by discussing possible future avenues of research.Government securities

Nonlinear time series analysis

This entry for the New Palgrave covers developments in nonlinear time series analysis over the last 25 years