This paper shows that market-based financial instruments are better suited to manage external price risk for a country that is a price taker in world commodity markets. This is especially the case for mineral and energy price risks where financial instruments (such as commodity swaps) exist for...

This paper derived closed form solutions for the pricing of options on average prices and recapture clauses. On this basis, the values of recapture clauses in the Mexico and Venezuela agreements under alternative assumptions regarding the state variable underlying the clauses are estimated. The...

The objective of this paper is to explore the application of risk management techniques to a typical developing country state-owned oil company (SOC) involved in importing and refining crude oil and to make estimates of the potential gains from using such techniques. The paper is structured as...

Cross-sectional tests of asset returns have a long tradition in finance. The often-used capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the arbitrage pricing theory both imply cross-sectional relationships between individual asset returns and other factors, and tests of those models have done much to...

The authors study the determinants of the growing migration of stock market activity to international financial centers. They use a sample of 77 countries and document that higher economic growth and more macroeconomic stability help stock market development. Countries with higher income per...

Commodity prices have historically been among the most volatile of international prices. Measured volatility (the standard deviation of price changes) has not been below 15 percent and at times has been more than 50 percent. Often the volatility of commodity prices has exceeded that of exchange...

Equity flows to developing countries climbed to an estimated $13 billion in 1992, four times the amount invested three years earlier. Investment increased partly because countries removed restrictions on foreign ownership, liberalized capital account transactions, and generally made foreign...

Using bank-level data, the authors apply the Panzar and Rosse (1987) methodology to estimate the extent to which changes in input prices are reflected in revenues earned by specific banks in 50 countries'banking systems. They then relate this competitiveness measure to indicators of...

This paper presents a pricing model for secondary market debt designed to assess the market value of various forms of guarantees and the impact of debt reduction on the value of remaining claims. The model is more flexible and realistic than other models. The technique used, option pricing,...

The Venezuelan government and PDVSA (Venezuela's state oil companies) are both exposed to oil price instability. Given the existing tax structure, PDVSA has a higher exposure than the government, especially when prices drop below $18-20 a barrel. The authors show that the volatility of prices...