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Purpose – This chapter aimed to investigate hedge funds market risk. One aims to go further the traditional measures of risk that underestimates it by introducing a more appropriate method to hedge funds. One demonstrates that daily hedge fund return distributions are asymmetric and leptokurtic. Furthermore, volatility clustering phenomenon and the existence of ARCH effects demonstrate that hedge funds volatility varies through time. These features suggest the modelisation of their volatility using symmetric (GARCH) and asymmetric (EGARCH and TGARCH) models used to evaluate a 1-day-ahead value at risk (VaR).

Methodology/Approach – The conditional variances were estimated under the assumption that residuals t follow the normal and the student law. The knowledge of the conditional variance was used to forecast 1-day-ahead VaR. The estimations are compared with the Gaussian, the student and the modified VaR. To sum up, 12 VaRs are computed; those based on standard deviation and computed with normal, student and cornish fisher quantile and those based on conditional volatility models (GARCH, TGARCH and EGARCH) computed with the same quantiles.

Findings – The results demonstrate that VaR models based on normal quantile underestimate risk while those based on student and cornish fisher quantiles seem to be more relevant measurements. GARCH-type VaRs are very sensitive to changes in the return process. Back-testing results show that the choice of the model used to forecast volatility has an importance. Indeed, the VaR based on standard deviation is not relevant to measure hedge funds risks as it fails the appropriate tests. On the opposite side, GARCH-, TGARCH- and EGARCH-type VaRs are accurate as they pass most of the time successfully the back-testing tests. But, the quantile used has a more significant impact on the relevance of the VaR models considered. GARCH-type VaR computed with the student and especially cornish fisher quantiles lead to better results, which is consistent with Monteiro (2004) and Pochon and Teïletche (2006).

Originality/Value of chapter – A large set of GARCH-type models are considered to estimate hedge funds volatility leading to numerous evaluation of VaRs. These estimations are very helpful. Indeed, public savings under institutional investors management then delegate to hedge funds are concerned. Therefore, an adequate risk management is required. Another contribution of this chapter is the use of daily data to measure all hedge fund strategies risks.

We develop the concept of the slave-trade balance of payments and generate its table for the United States for 1790–1860. In the process, we construct new data for the slave trade, including both the physical movement and revenue figures, and we analyze these numbers. The balance of payments includes slave imports, carrying trade in slaves, purchases of slaves that fail to be imported, outfitting and provisioning slave ships, and slave-ship sales. The slave-trade balance is integrated into the standard balance of payments. Among the findings are the following: slave imports were dominated by natural growth except for one decade; US ships had the greater role than foreign ships in the import trade, but were of small—and eventually nil—consequence in the carrying trade; federal and state laws to prohibit the slave trade in all its aspects were generally effective; and the slave-trade balance of payments was a small component of the overall balance.

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued paper monies as an important internal media of exchange. This system arose piecemeal. In the absence of banks and treasuries that exchanged paper monies at face value for specie monies on demand, colonial governments experimented with other ways to anchor their paper monies to real values in the economy. These mechanisms included tax-redemption, land-backed loans, sinking funds, interest-bearing notes, and legal tender laws. I assess and explain the structure and performance of these mechanisms. This was monetary experimentation on a grand scale.

We find evidence that the runs on banks and trust companies in the Panic of 1907 were linked to the Bank of England’s contractionary monetary policy actions taken in 1906 and 1907 through the medium of copper prices. Results from our vector autoregressive models and copper stockpile data support our argument that a copper commodity price channel may have been active in transmitting the Bank’s policy to the New York markets. Archival evidence suggests that the plunge in copper prices may have partially triggered both the initiation and the failure of an attempt to corner the shares of United Copper, and in turn, the bank and trust company runs related to that transaction’s failure. We suggest that the substantial short-term uncertainties accompanying the development of the copper-intensive electrical and telecommunications industries likely played a role in the plunge in copper prices. Additionally, we find evidence that the copper price transmission mechanism was also likely active in five other countries that year. While we do not argue that copper caused the 1907 crisis, we suggest that it was an active policy transmission channel amplifying the classic effect that was already spreading through the money market channel. If the bust in copper prices partially triggered the 1907 panic, then it provides additional evidence that contractionary monetary policy may have had an unintended, adverse consequence of contributing to a bank panic and, therefore, supports other recent findings that monetary policy deliberations might benefit from considering the policy impact on asset prices.

The 1896 presidential election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley has new salience in the wake of the 2016 presidential contest. We provide the first systematic analysis of presidential voting in 1896, combining county-level returns with economic, financial, and demographic data. We show that Bryan did well where interest rates were high, railroad penetration was low, and crop prices had declined. We show that further declines in crop prices or increases in interest rates would have been enough to tip the Electoral College in Bryan’s favor. But to change the outcome, the additional changes would have had to be large.

This chapter examines the patterns of immigrants’ integration in a state of the Midwest of the United States, Indiana, which has experienced a growth of more than 250% of the foreign-born population in the last 20 years. The study, based on in-depth interviews and document analysis, examines the ways that immigrants blend into mainstream society in everyday life and in social interactions, as well as the obstacles they encounter in this process. The study reveals the cultural changes in the host culture as a result of the large number of immigrants who have established their residence in this state, the dichotomies that emerge between “natives” and “newcomers.” It also shows that immigrants stay connected to their country of origin through electronic media (in particular television and computers) and how this technology affects the process of integration. Finally, the study demonstrates that there is a process of segmented assimilation and variations in the immigrants’ sense of identity according to their socioeconomic status and ethnic background.

We construct a new consumer price index for Canada covering the period from 1870 to 1900. Unlike previous indexes, it includes prices of clothing and household furnishings. This is important because these previously neglected components accounted for roughly 20% of consumers' expenditures. Moreover, the price of cotton goods, the most important textile product used for clothing and household furnishings, fell by half between 1870 and 1900 (much faster than other components of the price level). This has ramifications for both the level and trend of Canadian GDP. Because the largest changes in estimation concern the 1870s, we show that the country grew substantially faster than generally believed. It outpaced the United States so much that it entered the twentieth century with an improved economic standing relative to its southern neighbor.