Volume 18, Issue 1

The growth optimal portfolio (GOP) plays an important role in finance, where it serves as the numéraire portfolio, with respect to which contingent claims can be priced under the real world probability measure. This paper models the GOP using a time dependent constant elasticity of variance (TCEV) model. The TCEV model has high tractability for a range of derivative prices and fits well the dynamics of a global diversified world equity index. This is confirmed when pricing and hedging various derivatives using this index.

This paper empirically examines the time series behavior of primary commodity prices relative to manufactures with reference to the nature of their underlying trends and the persistence of shocks driving the price processes. The direction and magnitude of the trends are assessed employing a set of econometric techniques that is robust to the nature of persistence in the commodity price shocks, thereby obviating the need for unit root pretesting. Specifically, the methods allow consistent estimation of the number and location of structural breaks in the trend function as well as facilitate the distinction between trend breaks and pure level shifts. Further, a new set of powerful unit root tests is applied to determine whether the underlying commodity price series can be characterized as difference or trend stationary processes. These tests treat breaks under the unit root null and the trend stationary alternative in a symmetric fashion thereby alleviating the procedures from spurious rejection problems and low power issues that plague most existing procedures. Relative to the extant literature, we find more evidence in favor of trend stationarity suggesting that real commodity price shocks are primarily of a transitory nature. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of our results.

This paper considers a time varying parameter extension of the Ruge-Murcia’s (Ruge-Murcia, F. J. 2003. “Does the Barro-Gordon Model Explain the Behavior of us Inflation? A Reexamination of the Empirical Evidence.” Journal of Monetary Economics 50: 1375–1390; Ruge-Murcia, F. J. 2004. “The Inflation Bias When the Central Bank Targets the Natural Rate of Unemployment.” European Economic Review 48: 91–107.) model to explore whether some of the variation in parameter estimates seen in the literature could arise from this source. A time varying value for the unemployment volatility parameter can be motivated through several means including variation in the slope of the Phillips curve or variation in the preferences of the monetary authority. We show that allowing time variation for the coefficient on the unemployment volatility parameter improves the model fit and it helps to provide an explanation of inflation bias based on asymmetric central banker preferences, which is consistent across subsamples.

A time-varying model of equity returns consisting of a volatility factor with time-varying loading, is specified to investigate the dynamical effects of shocks on expected returns. The proposed specification yields a nonlinear relationship between the conditional mean and the news, referred to as the mean impact curve (MIC). Applying this framework to the AORD, Hang Seng and Straits Times equity indexes yields estimated MICs with qualitatively similar nonlinear characteristics for each equity market. An important implication of the empirical results is that the relationship between the conditional mean and the news is found to be dependent upon the size of the shock, a result which is consistent with equity markets displaying mean aversion over short horizons and mean reversion over long horizons.

In this paper we use a long memory framework to examine the validity of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis using both monthly and quarterly data for a panel of 47 countries over a 50 year period (1957–2009). The analysis focuses on the long memory parameter d that allows us to obtain different convergence classifications depending on its value. Our analysis allows for the presence of smooth structural breaks and it does not rely on the use of a benchmark. Overall the evidence strongly points to the presence of a long memory process, where 0.5<d<1. The implication of our results is that we find long memory mean reverting convergence, something that is also consistent with Pesaran, M. H., R. P. Smith, T. Yamagata, and L. Hvozdyk. 2009. “Pairwise Tests of Purchasing Power Parity.” Econometric Reviews 28: 495–521. In explaining the speed of convergence as captured by the estimated long memory parameter d we find impediments to trade such as distance between neighboring countries and sticky prices to be mainly responsible for the slow adjustment of real exchange rates to PPP rather than nominal rates for all country groups but Asia, where the opposite is true.

This paper studies herd behavior, bubbles and social interactions in financial markets through the asset pricing models with heterogeneous interacting agents. The relationship between social interactions, herd behavior and bubbles is examined. It is found that herd behavior arises naturally when there are strong enough social interactions among individual investors. In addition, an extremely small bubble may cause a sufficiently large number of traders to engage in herd behavior when the social interactions among traders are strong.