The Role of Financial Speculation in Driving the Price of Crude Oil Staff Discussion Paper 2011-6 Ron Alquist, Olivier Gervais Over the past 10 years, financial firms have increased the size of their positions in the oil futures market. At the same time, oil prices have increased dramatically. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, Q, Q4, Q41
The Private Equity Premium Puzzle Revisited Staff Working Paper 2011-6 Katya Kartashova In this paper, I extend the results of Moskowitz and Vissing-Jørgensen (2002) on the returns to entrepreneurial investments in the United States. First, following the authors’ methodology I replicate the original findings from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for the period 1989–1998 and show that the returns to private and public equity are similar. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Interest rates, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): G, G1, G11, G12, G2, G24, G3, G31, G32
Private Information Flow and Price Discovery in the U.S. Treasury Market Staff Working Paper 2011-5 George Jiang, Ingrid Lo Existing studies show that U.S. Treasury bond price changes are mainly driven by public information shocks, as manifested in macroeconomic news announcements and events. The literature also shows that heterogeneous private information contributes significantly to price discovery for U.S. Treasury securities. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G14
Testing Linear Factor Pricing Models with Large Cross-Sections: A Distribution-Free Approach Staff Working Paper 2010-36 Sermin Gungor, Richard Luger We develop a finite-sample procedure to test the beta-pricing representation of linear factor pricing models that is applicable even if the number of test assets is greater than the length of the time series. Our distribution-free framework leaves open the possibility of unknown forms of non-normalities, heteroskedasticity, time-varying correlations, and even outliers in the asset returns. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, C14, C3, C33, G, G1, G11, G12
An Assessment of the Bank of Canada's Term PRA Facility Staff Working Paper 2010-20 Emanuella Enenajor, Alex Sebastian, Jonathan Witmer This paper empirically assesses the effectiveness of the Bank of Canada's term Purchase and Resale Agreement (PRA) facility in reducing short-term bank funding pressures, as measured by the CDOR-OIS spread. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): E, E5, E58, G, G1, G12, G18
International Capital Flows and Bond Risk Premia Staff Working Paper 2010-14 Jesus Sierra This paper studies the impact of international capital flows on asset prices through risk premia. We investigate whether foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury securities significantly contributed to the decline in excess returns on long-term bonds between 1995 and 2008. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, F, F3, F31, F32, F34, G, G1, G11, G12, G15
Idiosyncratic Coskewness and Equity Return Anomalies Staff Working Paper 2010-11 Fousseni Chabi-Yo, Jun Yang In this paper, we show that in a model where investors have heterogeneous preferences, the expected return of risky assets depends on the idiosyncratic coskewness beta, which measures the co-movement of the individual stock variance and the market return. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G11, G12, G14, G3, G33
Search Frictions and Asset Price Volatility Staff Working Paper 2010-1 B. Ravikumar, Enchuan Shao We examine the quantitative effect of search frictions in product markets on asset price volatility. We combine several features from Shi (1997) and Lagos and Wright (2002) in a model without money. Households prefer special goods and general goods. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): E, E4, E44, G, G1, G12
Measures of Aggregate Credit Conditions and Their Potential Use by Central Banks Staff Discussion Paper 2009-12 Alejandro García, Andrei Prokopiw Understanding the nature of credit risk has important implications for financial stability. Since authorities – notably, central banks – focus on risks that have systemic implications, it is crucial to develop ways to measure these risks. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial markets, Financial stability JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G12, G13
The Equity Premium and the Volatility Spread: The Role of Risk-Neutral Skewness Staff Working Paper 2009-20 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Roméo Tedongap We introduce the Homoscedastic Gamma [HG] model where the distribution of returns is characterized by its mean, variance and an independent skewness parameter under both measures. The model predicts that the spread between historical and risk-neutral volatilities is a function of the risk premium and of skewness. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, G13