A number of empirical studies, mainly from academic researchers, have been crucial in the debate on the economic role of futures trading. This article briefly reviews these influential studies with a focus on agricultural futures contracts, financial futures contracts. and the transparency of data

The recent political developments in the Middle East have prompted increased scrutiny of the economies of the nations lying in this region. Over the past few months, the financial markets of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been affected by the speculations that existed before the war in...

This paper surveys methodologies on the statistical approach to term structure estimation, also known as yield curve smoothing models. Specifically, term structure estimation methods are reviewed to determine the effects of the assumed functional form of the interpolating function and whether...

This paper models stock returns as a function of three components: a constant expected return, the impact of the mechanism for executing trades, and a rational expectations error. We examine changes in these parameters using Goldfeld and Quandt's (1976) deterministic switching based on time....

The historical literature has traditionally paid much attention to the role of universal banking in the industrialization of Germany and has presumed, in line with Gerschenkron (1962), that the system gained preeminence in the late nineteenth century due to the general 'backwardness' of the...

The on-the-run term structure is generally estimated from yields on securities that sell at or near their par values. These yields can be obtained either from market data or from published estimates of par yields, known as constant maturity Treasury yields. The purpose of this research is to...

Five methods of estimating the term structure from on-the-run Treasuries are compared with respect to error in spot rate estimation, forward rate estimation and coupon bond pricing. The methods can all be considered variants of the bootstrapping technique. The two discrete-time bootstrapping...

This study estimates optimal hedge ratios using various econometric models. Using both All Ordinary Index and SPI futures on the Australian market, the optimal hedge ratios are calculated from the OLS regression model, the bivariate vector autoregressive model (BVAR), the error-correction model...