This paper investigates the interest rate pass-through in eight European countries analyzing their short-run and long-run monetary transmission mechanisms. We investigate the relationship between the Euribor and the long-run interest rate on loans to non-financial corporations and allow for a...

Emerging market economies have recently accumulated large stocks of foreign reserves. In this paper we address the question of what are the main factors accounting for reserve holdings in nine developing countries located in Asia and Latin America. Monthly data from January 1985 to May 2006 are...

This paper assesses empirically whether speculation affects oil price dynamics. The growing presence of financial operators in the oil markets has led to the diffusion of trading techniques based on extrapolative expectations. Strategies of this kind foster feedback trading that may cause large...

This study introduces a non linear model for commodity futures prices which accounts for the pressures due to hedging and speculative activities. The interaction with the corresponding spot market is considered assuming that a long term equilibrium relationship holds between futures and spot...

The growing presence of financial operators in the oil markets has modified oil price dynamics. The diffusion of techniques based on extrapolative expectations – such as feedback trading – leads to departures of prices from their fundamental values and increases their variability. Oil price...

The interaction between rational hedgers and informed oil traders is parameterized and tested empirically with the help of a complex non linear smooth transition regime shift CCC-GARCH procedure. In spite of their gyrations, futures price changes are usually self-correcting. Well informed...

The three exchange rate regimes adopted by Italy from 1883 up to the eve of World War I — the gold standard (1883-1893), floating rates (1894-1902), and “gold shadowing” (1903-1911) — produced a puzzling result: formal adherence to the gold standard ended in failure while shadowing the...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between commodity price volatility and market fundamentals comparing the 1920s with the present decade and focusing on cotton and tin. The theory of storage provides the theoretical reference for the analysis. Our first result is to find that the...

The paper investigates the role of speculation in the Liverpool cotton futures market between 1921 and 1929. The analysis is based on historical descriptions of the working of speculation in commodity markets and is related to the tenets of behavioural finance. The model posits the existence of...