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Assumptions regarding long‐term expected returns have significant implications for asset/liability management of financial institutions. This article questions the validity of common assumptions regarding long‐term expected returns that are employed by financial institutions, in particular insurance companies. Although this article directly addresses this issue in the context of the insurance industry, the discussion is relevant for all institutional investors in fixed income markets.

The National commodity exchanges were established in India in the year 2003-2004 to perform the functions of price discovery and price risk management in the economy. The derivatives market can perform these functions properly only if they are efficient and unbiased. So, there is a need to properly evaluate these aspects of the Indian commodity derivatives market. The purpose of this paper is to test the market efficiency and unbiasedness of the Indian soybean futures markets.

The paper uses cointegration and a QARCH-M-ECM-based framework to test the market efficiency and unbiasedness in the soybean futures contract traded in the National Commodity Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX). The cointegration test is used to test the long-run unbiasedness and market efficiency of the contract, while the QARCH-M-ECM model is used to test the short-run market efficiency and unbiasedness of the contract by allowing for a time-varying risk premium. The price data is also tested for presence of structural breaks using a Zivot and Andrews unit root test.

The soybean contract is unbiased in the long run, but there are short-run market inefficiencies and also a presence of a time-varying risk premium. Though the weak form of market efficiency is rejected in the short run, the semi-strong market efficiency is not rejected based on the forecasts.

This is the first paper to consider time-varying risk premium while performing the tests of market efficiency and unbiasedness on Indian commodity markets.

This study is to examine the three theme of the eπiciency of Korea foreign exchange market including the unbiasedness testing, the relative efficiency estimates, and the information spillover efficiency. Data using the analysis 81’e won-dollar spot and futures in domestic and won-dollar forward in offshore. i.e.. New York and Singapore NDF (non-delivery forward).

The empirical results are summarized as follows: First. the efficient market or unbiasedness expectations hypothesis is not rejected in the won-dollar currency futures market apart from offshore New York and Singapore NDF markets. This indicates that the won-dollar futures price is likely to be an accurate indicator of future won-dollar spot prices without the trader having to pay a risk premium for the privilege of trading the contract. Second. the findings suggest the domestic won-dollar futures market is 13.58% efficient. the Singapore offshore won-dollar NDF market is 11.38% efficient. and the New York offshore won-dollar NDF market is 2.68% efficient. This indicates that the domestic won-dollar futures market is more efficient than the offshore won-dollar NDF market. It is therefore possible to conclude that the domestic currency futures price is a relatively successful predictor of the future spot price. Third. the findings suggest the information spillover exists between domestic won-dollar spot/futures market and offshore won-dollar New York NDF market in both direction. This indicates that the two markets are efficiently linked.

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.

The common view of many regulators and practitioners is that the minimum risk maturity gap is equal to zero. However, because of the interest sensitivity of such non‐gap items as the average spread between asset and liability rates, lending activity, fee income and prepayments, the minimum risk gap could be significantly different from zero. We formulate and test a model for a sample of four hundred and twenty six thrift institutions. The results strongly suggest that the minimum risk maturity gap is positive for the average firm in the sample and that there is substantial cross‐sectional variability in the ratio of the minimum risk gap to assets. This suggests that attempts to regulate interest rate risk using a uniform gap as a benchmark are misdirected. Finally, we provide some evidence that there is, in fact, a positive cross‐sectional relationship between measured maturity gap positions and our estimates of the minimum risk maturity gap.

This paper provides a critique of minimum variance hedging using futures. The paper develops the conventional minimum variance hedge ratio (MVHR) and discusses its estimation. A review of the wide variety of alternative methods used to construct MVHRs is then performed. These methods highlight many of the potential limitations in the conventional framework. The paper argues that the literature should focus more on the assumptions underlying the conventional MVHR, rather than improving the techniques used to estimate the conventional MVHR.

This chapter focuses on the common occurrence of wholesale electricity prices that fall below the cost of production. This “negative pricing” in effect represents payment to high-volume consumers for taking excess power off the grid, thus relieving overload. Occurrences of negative pricing have been observed since the wholesale electricity markets have been operating, and occur during periods of low demand, while generators are being kept in reserve for rapid engagement when demand increases (it is expensive and time-consuming to shut down generators and then restart them, so they are often kept in “spooling mode”). In such situations power production may temporarily exceed demand, potentially overloading the system. When the federal government began subsidizing the construction of wind generation projects, with regulations in place requiring transmission grids to accept all of the electricity produced by the wind generators, negative pricing became more frequent.

In this chapter, we analyze the information content of data on inflationary expectations derived from the Israeli bond market. The results indicate that these expectations are unbiased and efficient with respect to the variables considered. In other words, we cannot reject the hypothesis that these expectations are rational.

The existence of continuous data of this type, which is unique to the Israeli economy, enables us to test a number of hypotheses concerning the nature of price adjustment. The study found that expected inflation is a primary factor in the explanation of current inflation. This result is in agreement with the neo-Keynesian approach according to which the adjustment of prices is costly, and as a result, price increases in the present are determined primarily by expectations of future price increases. It was also found that inflation in Israel is better explained by the neo-Keynesian approach than by the classical approach or the “lack of information” approach according to which current inflation is determined by past, rather than current, inflationary expectations.

Another issue examined in this study is whether inflationary inertia existed in Israel during the 1990s. From conventional estimation of an inflation equation (i.e., using future inflation as proxy for expectations), one can get the impression that there was strong inflationary inertia during this period. However, when data on inflationary expectations from the bond market were used in the estimation, this inertia (i.e., lagged inflation) became negative (and insignificant). This finding raises the possibility that inflationary inertia that is found elsewhere is not a structural phenomenon but an outcome of lack of reliable data on inflationary expectations.

This paper investigates the validity of the expectations hypothesis for the term structure of interest rates in the context of the deposit interest rates in Kuwait. The data set covers average inter local bank interest rates on deposits of Kuwaiti Dinar (KD) with maturity of one, three and six months from the period June 1994 to August 2008. We utilize Johansen procedures to examine the relationship between spot and forward rates. Our findings show that the spot and forward rates are cointegrated for all cases, the one month interest rates, the three month interest rates as well as the six month interest rates. The explanation of this relationship indicates that the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates is accepted for the case of Kuwait.

Survey data on expected and actual prices received by individual vegetable growers in Florida, Michigan and Texas in 1990 are used to test the rational expectations hypothesis. The use of individual grower data overcomes many of the issues that have limited previous tests of this hypothesis in agriculture. Overall, finds that price expectations of vegetable growers are inconsistent with the rational expectations hypothesis for the majority of vegetable/state combinations studied.