Simple regression tests that have power against the alternatives that. asset prices and expected future asset returns are excessively volatile are developed and performed for the foreign exchange and stock markets. These tests have a number of advantages over alternative, variance hounds...

This paper investigates the effects of imperfectly credible trade liberalization programs on welfare and the allocation of real resources. We present a rational expectations model in which a government, with limited access to international financial markets may be forced to abort a...

Using a new technique, and weekly data for 25 countries from 1994 to 1998, we analyze the relationship between institutional cross-border portfolio flows, and domestic and foreign equity returns. In emerging markets, institutional flows forecast statistically indistinguishable movements in...

We decompose currency returns into (permanent) intrinsic-value shocks and (transitory) expected-return shocks. We explore interactions between these shocks, currency returns, and institutional-investor currency flows. Intrinsic-value shocks are: dwarfed by expected-return shocks (yet currency...

Discusses a company deciding what it should do to manage its worldwide hedging operations.

We model the equilibrium price and quantity of risk transfer between firms and financial intermediaries. Value-maximizing firms have downward sloping demands to cede risk, while intermediaries, who assume risk, provide less-than-fully-elastic supply. We show that equilibrium required returns...

We investigate how shareholder trading practices might be linked to corporate investment horizons. We examine two possible linkages and analyze a range of data relevant to them. The first is excess volatility, which occurs when stock prices react not only to news about economic fundamentals, but...

This paper examines the market for catastrophe event risk i.e., financial claims that are linked to losses associated with natural hazards, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Risk management theory suggests protection by insurers and other corporations against the largest cat events is most...