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This study examines the indirect hedging strategy and its price ccndition against exchange risk for the export firms which can not directly hedge due to non-existence of appropriate futures market for the export market currency. The export firms would manipulate their mark-up rate as real hedging against exchange risk in the incomplete export market. Real options tend to reduce the uncertainty of an export profit curve in nonlinear manner and thus, substitute for the financial hedging. As a result, the optimal hedging strategy for the firms exporting to the incomplete market is an under hedge combining short futures and long put. The long put is a substitute with short futures and required to cover the nonlinear risk of export profit derived by real options. Indirect hedging would increase the expected profit by reducing risk, while a sufficient and necessary condition for the optimal indirect hedging depends on exchange volatility and a magnitude of put premium relative to an expected excercise loss.

In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, the UK government has set a target of achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Agricultural GHG emissions in 2017 were 45.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e; 10% of UK total GHG emissions). Farmland hedgerows are a carbon sink, storing carbon in the vegetation and soils beneath them, and thus increasing hedgerow length by 40% has been proposed in the UK to help meet net zero targets. However, the full impact of this expansion on farm biodiversity is yet to be evaluated in a net zero context. This paper critically synthesises the literature on the biodiversity implications of hedgerow planting and management on arable farms in the UK as a rapid review with policy recommendations. Eight peer-reviewed articles were reviewed, with the overall scientific evidence suggesting a positive influence of hedgerow management on farmland biodiversity, particularly coppicing and hedgelaying, although other boundary features, e.g. field margins and green lanes, may be additive to net zero hedgerow policy as they often supported higher abundances and richness of species. Only one paper found hedgerow age effects on biodiversity, with no significant effects found. Key policy implications are that further research is required, particularly on the effect of hedgerow age on biodiversity, as well as mammalian and avian responses to hedgerow planting and management, in order to fully evaluate hedgerow expansion impacts on biodiversity.

This article empirically tests the time-correlation of implied information reflecting the return dynamics of KOSPI 200 markets in the view of the decision making and market efficiency. Because option prices are not perfectly correlated with each other and with the underlying asset, the information contents of the option are different from those of the underlying market price. And, under the non-complete of the market and the limited arbitrage, the information implied in option (underlying) market price may be more useful in the option (underlying) market than in the underlying (option) market.

The estimation results show that the time-correlation of incremental information are existed in performance of out-of-sample pricing and delta hedging conditioned on MR, a result which is not suggestive of the informational efficiency of the KOSPI 200 market. But, the decision marking using the systematic pattern may not be useful due to the option pricing models that allows moments of higher order than two reflecting the source of which the risk-neutrality assumption is strongly rejected by the data.

Drawing upon underinvestment theory and clientele effect hypothesis, this paper aims to examine the effects of foreign currency (forex) exposure and Shari’ah-compliant status on firms’ financial hedging strategy.

Based on data of 250 nonfinancial firms listed on Bursa Malaysia from 2010 to 2018 (2,250 firm-year observations), the authors test the impact of forex exposure based on a vector of foreign-denominated cash flows (FCF) indicators and firms’ Sharīʿah-compliant status on two proxies of financial hedging decisions, namely, the ratio of the notional value of currency derivatives to total assets and a binomial measure of hedging status. The hedging decision models are estimated using panel logistic regression and system generalized method of moments.

The results indicate significant positive effects of the forex exposure indicators on firms’ propensity to hedge. However, the impact of forex exposure is most prevalent via total FCF. The results also reveal significant positive effects of Sharīʿah-compliant status on firms’ propensity to hedge but its negative impacts on the value of currency derivatives they use. The results suggest that Sharīʿah-compliant firms refrain from engaging in currency derivatives to avoid riba’ and subsequently subdue the clientele effect. However, when the forex exposure reaches higher levels, engagement in currency derivatives becomes a matter of tentative necessity (dharurat).

This study relies exclusively on the disclosure of foreign currency risk and management data in the annual reports of listed companies. Consequently, this limits the sample size to only those nonfinancial listed companies with complete data for the study period. Also, since none of the companies reports using Sharīʿah-compliant derivatives, the authors thus assume that they use derivative instruments that tolerate “riba.”

Given the significance of forex exposure on hedging decisions, the accounting profession must strictly adopt FRS 7 and FRS 139 for all listed firms to avoid market scrutiny and sustain their clientele. The results also call for the Islamic market regulators to include mandatory disclosure of conventional currency derivatives in screening firms for clearly prohibited activities to help enhance the credibility of its Islamic financial market.

Due to difficulty accessing relevant cash flow data, the study is among the few studies that measure forex exposure using FCF and test more proxy indicators. This study is perhaps the first to examine the Shari’ah perspective on currency derivatives in corporate forex risk management.

The purpose of this paper is to unveil the main changes in the UAE’s policy towards Iran since its foundation in 1971. The UAE favored strategic hedging, extending its commercial and diplomatic relations with Iran, in addition to developing its military capabilities and maintaining military/security alliances with Saudi Arabia and the USA. However, the UAE started to reorient its policy towards Iran by adopting some sort of balancing strategy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011. This paper examines how and why the UAE had to change course and explores whether it would revert back to strategic hedging with Iran.

The study will be carried out based on a theoretical framework drawn from strategic hedging theory, a new structural theory in international relations, to examine the shifts in UAE policy towards Iran. Previous literature suggests that small states prefer hedging over balancing or bandwagoning. The authors also undertake a descriptive analysis and deploy a longitudinal within-case method to investigate changes in UAE policy towards Iran and identify the causal mechanisms behind these changes. That method allows investigating the impact of a particular event on a case by comparing the same case before and after that event occurred.

The main finding of this study is that the UAE hedging strategy towards Iran allowed maximizing the political and economic returns from the cooperation with Iran and mitigating the long-range national security risks without breaking up the consistent and beneficial ties with other regional and global powers. Hedging achieved the desired outcome, which is preventing direct military confrontation with Iran. Hard balancing, adopted by Abu Dhabi after the 2011 Arab Spring, has proved to have some negative effects, most importantly provoking Tehran. Some recent indicators suggest, though that the UAE may revert back to its long-established hedging policy towards Iran.

Strategic hedging is a new structural theory in international relation, although hedging behavior in states’ foreign policies is far from new. It is new enough, thus, not have been researched sufficiently, strategic hedging still needs theorizing and comparison. This paper highlights the importance of strategic hedging as the most appropriate strategy for small states. It provides an important contribution to the application of the theory to the case of UAE policy towards Iran. The paper also assesses the conventional wisdom that small states prefer hedging over balancing in the light of the changes in the UAE foreign policy since 2011.

The purpose of this paper is to show that major reversals of an index (specifically BIST-30 index) can be detected uniquely on the date of reversal by checking the extreme outliers in the rate of change series using daily closing prices.

The extreme outliers are determined by checking if either the rate of change series or the volatility of the rate of change series displays more than two standard deviations on the date of reversal. Furthermore; wavelet analysis is also utilized for this purpose by checking the extreme outlier characteristics of the A1 (approximation level 1) and D3 (detail level 3) wavelet components.

Paper investigates ten major reversals of BIST-30 index during a five year period. It conclusively shows that all these major reversals are characterized by extreme outliers mentioned above. The paper also checks if these major reversals are unique in the sense of being observed only on the date of reversal but not before. The empirical results confirm the uniqueness. The paper also demonstrates empirically the fact that extreme outliers are associated only with major reversals but not minor ones.

The results are important for fund managers for whom the timely identification of the initial phase of a major bullish or bearish trend is crucial. Such timely identification of the major reversals is also important for the hedging applications since a major issue in the practical implementation of the stock index futures as a hedging instrument is the correct timing of derivatives positions.

To the best of the author’ knowledge; this is the first study dealing with the issue of major reversal identification. This is evidently so for the BIST-30 index and the use of extreme outliers for this purpose is also a novelty in the sense that neither the use of rate of change extremity nor the use of wavelet decomposition for this purpose was addressed before in the international literature.

This paper aims to test three parametric models in pricing and hedging higher-order moment swaps. Using vanilla option prices from the volatility surface of the Euro Stoxx 50 Index, the paper shows that the pricing accuracy of these models is very satisfactory under four different pricing error functions. The result is that taking a position in a third moment swap considerably improves the performance of the standard hedge of a variance swap based on a static position in the log-contract and a dynamic trading strategy. The position in the third moment swap is taken by running a Monte Carlo simulation.

This paper undertook empirical tests of three parametric models. The aim of the paper is twofold: assess the pricing accuracy of these models and show how the classical hedge of the variance swap in terms of a position in a log-contract and a dynamic trading strategy can be significantly enhanced by using third-order moment swaps. The pricing accuracy was measured under four different pricing error functions. A Monte Carlo simulation was run to take a position in the third moment swap.

The results of the paper are twofold: the pricing accuracy of the Heston (1993) model and that of two Levy models with stochastic time and stochastic volatility are satisfactory; taking a position in third-order moment swaps can significantly improve the performance of the standard hedge of a variance swap.

The limitation is that these empirical tests are conducted on existing three parametric models. Maybe more critical insights could have been revealed had these tests been conducted in a brand new derivatives pricing model.

This work is 100 per cent original, and it undertook empirical tests of the pricing and hedging accuracy of existing three parametric models.

The recommendation of the analyst report is not only limited to a small number of ratings, but also biased toward a buy opinion with the absence of sell opinion. As an alternative to this, this paper aims to extract analysts' textual opinions embedded in the report body through text analysis and examine the profitability of investment strategies. Analyst opinion about a firm is measured by calculating the frequency of positive and negative words in the report text through the Korean sentiment lexicon for finance (KOSELF). To verify the usefulness of textual opinions, the author constructs a calendar-time based portfolios by the analysts' textual opinion variable of each stock. When opinion level is used, investment strategy has no significant hedged portfolio return. However, hedged portfolio constructed by opinion change shows significant return of 0.117% per day (2.57% per month). In addition, the hedged return increases to 0.163% per day (3.59% per month) when the opening price is used instead of closing price. This study show that the analysts’ opinion extracted from text analysis contains more detailed spectrum than recommendation and investment strategies using them give significant returns.