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The 2007 BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives Market Activity Report shows a substantial increase in turnover in foreign exchange and OTC derivatives markets. Turnover in traditional FX markets increased to reach $3.2 trillion. The largest contributor to this 71% increase between April 2004 and April 2007 occurred in FX swaps. It was like a prelude to the financial crisis of 2007–2008 driven by transactions carried out between banks and other financial institutions due to the significance of hedge funds and major engagement of emerging market currencies which have sought new configurations of portfolio diversification worldwide.

This study seeks to explore the presence and the relative strength of market efficiency in the onshore and offshore Renminbi (RMB) forward markets.

In the onshore and offshore foreign exchange markets, the RMB forward contracts are designed in similar ways. However, the underlying economic forces and regulatory frameworks are very different in these two markets. We first analyze the functioning of each market, by examining the covered interest rate parity (CIRP) conditions. Second, we explore the CIRP deviations in the two markets and quantify the role of market frictions and government interventions.

We find that the CIRP condition does not hold in either the onshore or the offshore RMB forward markets. We also find that the offshore market is more efficient than the onshore market in conveying private information about investors’ expectation.

Our results reveal that the onshore RMB forward market provides an imperfect platform for investors to manage their currency exposures. We suggest that by opening the offshore market to domestic participants and the onshore market to more foreigners, the forward rates may become more informative with a greater investor mix. These liberalization efforts are important steps in the right directions to improve market efficiency in the Chinese FOREX market.

This paper examines Korean reserve forces with respect to their missions, roles and utilisation. Korea has a huge standing army of 686,000 and reserve forces of 3,040,000. The Korean peninsular is the last spot of the cold war. In spite of mutual efforts by South and North Korea to keep peace in this region these days, there has been no sign yet to downsize military manpower and equipments by either side. It is generally believed that in the future, as the international security environment and inter-Korea relations change, the size of the standing army will be downsized and the role of reserve forces will increase instead. The Korea Institute of Defence Analyses (KIDA) estimated that the appropriate military strength of Korea be around 500,000 in the year of 2015, 200,000 less than the present size. In particular, the number of draftees will be reduced, while the number of officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) will be kept at the present level (Lim, 2001). The reduction of the standing army, as has been observed in other nations, may require proper utilisation of reserves.

We examine whether the hedging effectiveness of crude oil futures is affected by asymmetry in the return distribution by applying tail-specific metrics to compare the hedging effectiveness of both short and long hedgers. The hedging effectiveness metrics we use are based on lower partial moments (LPM), value at risk (VaR) and conditional value at risk (CVaR). Comparisons are applied to a number of hedging strategies including ordinary least square (OLS), and both symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models. We find that OLS provides consistently better performance across different measures of hedging effectiveness as compared with GARCH models, irrespective of the characteristics of the underlying distribution.

Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, Inc. (MISO) is a nonprofit regional transmission organization (RTO) that oversees electricity production and transmission across 13 states and 1 Canadian province. MISO also operates an electronic exchange for buying and selling electricity for each of its five regional hubs.

MISO oversees two types of markets. The forward market, which is referred to as the day-ahead (DA) market, allows market participants to place demand bids and supply offers on electricity to be delivered at a specified hour the following day. The equilibrium price, known as the locational marginal price (LMP), is determined by MISO after receiving sale offers and purchase bids from market participants. MISO also coordinates a spot market, which is known as the real-time (RT) market. Traders in the RT market must submit bids and offers by 30minutes prior to the hour for which the trade will be executed. After receiving purchase and sale offers for a given hour in the RT market, MISO then determines the LMP for that particular hour.

The existence of the DA and RT markets allows producers and retailers to hedge against the large fluctuations that are common in electricity prices. Hedge ratios on the MISO exchange are estimated using various techniques. No hedge ratio technique examined consistently outperforms the unhedged portfolio in terms of variance reduction. Consequently, none of the hedge ratio methods in this study meet the general interpretation of FASB guidelines for a highly effective hedge.

We study the empirical determinants of the Chinese renminbi (RMB) covered interest differential. The canonical macroeconomic variables including capital flight and the factors that affect country risk, and a few China-specific regulatory and institutional factors are considered. It is found that the effects of these canonical macroeconomic variables on the RMB covered interest differential are largely consistent with those reported in the literature. Further, the covered interest differential was affected by China's general capital control policy and its exchange rate reform program, but not its political risk index. The effects of these explanatory variables on the covered interest differential appear to work mainly via the forward premium rather than the interest rate differential component. The results are largely the same across the onshore and offshore RMB forward rates that cover different sample periods.