Changes In Market Prices Research Articles

Competitiveness, Profitability, Input Demand and Output Supply of Maize Production in Bangladesh

The study assesses international competitiveness, profitability, output supply and input demand of maize production using a farm survey data of 165 farmers from two major maize growing areas (i.e., Dinajpur and Lalmonirhat districts) of northwestern Bangladesh. Results revealed that maize production is globally competitive and, therefore, can successfully substitute its import. Maize production is also profitable at the farm level (Benefit Cost Ratio = 1.21) with no adverse influence of farm size on yield and profitability. Maize farmers are also responsive to changes in market prices of inputs and outputs. A 1% increase in maize price will increase output supply by 0.4%. The most dominant driver of maize supply and other input demands is land. A 1% increase in available land will increase maize supply by a substantial 3.9%. In addition, landless laborers will benefit through an increase in hired labor demand when land area increases. Policy implications include investments in R&D, tenurial reform to consolidate land holding and smooth functioning of the hired labor market in order to increase maize production and profitability in Bangladesh.

Determinants of Corporate Bond's Yields in Economy

Bond is a debt instrument used by the corporate to raise fund from the market. Market price of bond is inversely related with market interest rate. The percentage change in market price of bond for a proportional change in yield can be measured by modified duration, convexity, yield curve and expectation hypothesis. The objective of this paper is to identify different perspectives of bonds and bond market, to explore the determinants affecting bonds yield and to explain the mechanism through which determinants affects the corporate bonds yield. The methodology of the research paper is to analyse secondary data available in Bloomberg. USD currencies denominated bonds are used for analysis purpose. Different statistical tools such as correlation, regression, coefficient of determination and Analysis of Variance are used for interpretation of secondary data. After conducting empirical research, it is found that tenor of bond, credit rating of bond, currency of bond, country of bonds, collateral type of the bond and options of the bond have influence on bond’s yield. Longer tenor of the bond is expected to have higher yield. Higher credit rating of the bond reduces yield rate. Currency also impacts the bond. Currency with higher inflation rate of that country is expected to have higher interest rate. Country with higher sovereign rating has lower yield rate. Bonds which have callable options have lower yield rate. Secured bonds have lower yield rate whereas unsecured bond have higher yield rate.

Rice production structures in Sri Lanka: The normalized translog profit function approach

This study attempts to estimate the output supply and input demand elasticities of rice production using the restricted normalized translog profit function for the four major paddy producing districts; Anuradhapura, Hambantota, Kurunegala and Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka. In addition, elasticities of substitution between inputs are also estimated. The results suggest that the changes in market prices of inputs and output significantly affect the farmers` profits, rice supply and the use of resources in paddy cultivation. The supply elasticity of rice with respect to its own price is 0.5 and the supply elasticity of output with respect to fertilizer price is -0.05 on an average. Fertilizer demand in the country is inelastic but significant to its own price. Therefore, fertilizer subsidy is one of the main factors to increase fertilizer demand as well as paddy supply in the country. In addition, the low elasticity of substitution between labour and fertilizer and other inputs indicates that there is a complementary relationship among these inputs hence their combined application increases paddy production synergistically. Overall, this study suggest that farmers are price sensitive and assures prevalence of higher output price is essential for higher rice production.

Quantifying Stock Return Distributions in Financial Markets.

Being able to quantify the probability of large price changes in stock markets is of crucial importance in understanding financial crises that affect the lives of people worldwide. Large changes in stock market prices can arise abruptly, within a matter of minutes, or develop across much longer time scales. Here, we analyze a dataset comprising the stocks forming the Dow Jones Industrial Average at a second by second resolution in the period from January 2008 to July 2010 in order to quantify the distribution of changes in market prices at a range of time scales. We find that the tails of the distributions of logarithmic price changes, or returns, exhibit power law decays for time scales ranging from 300 seconds to 3600 seconds. For larger time scales, we find that the distributions tails exhibit exponential decay. Our findings may inform the development of models of market behavior across varying time scales.

Portfolio analysis of solar photovoltaics: Quantifying the contributions of locational marginal pricing and power on revenue variability

For firms developing and managing portfolios of PV assets in utility, commercial, and residential markets the financial performance of the portfolio is a highly relevant business decision factor. Informative metrics are required to quantify the revenue variance of a spatially distributed portfolio of PV assets as well as the individual asset. Financial analysis uses a risk measure known as ‘beta’ to describe the movement of assets relative to a broader portfolio. We define a measure termed the ‘solar beta’ that describes the movement of solar PV revenues at a given site with that of a portfolio of sites. The solar beta incorporates correlation between a site and portfolio, and the volatility of a site relative to the portfolio. We also derive and discuss a method to decompose revenue variance of individual PV assets into components representing price, power, and the interplay among diurnal/seasonal cycles and prevailing weather conditions. This decomposition and the solar beta are illustrated using nine modeled sites following a N–S trend within the PJM Interconnection. We find that revenue variance of a PV asset depends more on diurnal, seasonal, and meteorological fluctuations than on price fluctuations at a particular site. Specifically, the contribution of power variance exceeds the contribution of price variance by roughly a factor of five. Changes in mean market price have a larger effect on revenue variance compared to a proportional change in mean power production. The solar beta was found to be near 1.0 for most sites, indicating strong covariance within the portfolio due in large part to high correlation rather than similar volatility ratios. Lower beta values were found for sites at the perimeters of the study region, due to change in climate regime and population-power consumption cycles, implying portfolio risk reduction when these sites are included.

More New Evidence on Asymmetric Gasoline Price Responses

There exist two possible aggregation issues in studies to asymmetric price responses: (i) an issue due to aggregation over time, and (ii) an issue due to aggregation over space. Empirical studies already confirm the existence of the first issue. This paper confirms the existence of the second issue by studying daily retail prices of individual gasoline stations. I find that 38% of the stations respond asymmetrically to changes in the gasoline spot market price. Hence, asymmetric pricing is a feature of individual firms.

ARIMA modelling of Lithuanian house price index

Purpose– This paper aims to investigate Lithuanian house price changes. Its twin motivations are the importance of information on future house price movements to sector stakeholders and the limited number of related Lithuanian property market studies.Design/methodology/approach– The study employs ARIMA modelling approach. It assesses whether past is a good predictor of the future. It then examines issues relating to an application of this univariate time-series modelling technique in a forecasting context.Findings– As the results of the study suggest, ARIMA is a useful technique to assess broad market price changes. Government and central bank can use ARIMA modelling approach to forecast national house price inflation. Developers can employ this methodology to drive successful house-building programme. Investor can incorporate forecasts from ARIMA models into investment strategy for timing purposes.Research limitations/implications– Certainly, there are number of limitations attached to this particular modelling approach. Firm predictions about house price movements are also a challenge, as well as more research needs to be done in establishing a dynamic interrelationship between macro variables and the Lithuanian housing market.Originality/value– Although the research focused on Lithuania, the findings extend to global housing market. ARIMA house price modelling provides insights for a spectrum of stakeholders. The use of this modelling approach can be employed to improve monetary policy oversight, facilitate planning for infrastructure or social housing as a countercyclical policy and mitigate risk for investors. What is more, a greater appreciation of Lithuania housing market can act as a bellwether for real estate markets in other trade-exposed small country economies.

Fuels and plastics from lignocellulosic biomass via the furan pathway: an economic analysis

AbstractFuran compounds represent a class of chemicals that have the potential to become platform chemicals due to their attractive properties thanks to their structure. In a previous publication, three biorefinery cases were presented that convert wheat straw into polyethylene furanoate (PEF) and furfuryl ethyl ether (FEE) and analyzed from a technical point of view. In this paper, the production costs were calculated using the net present value methodology, including a sensitivity analysis to determine the effects for changes in financial parameters, feedstock, chemicals, and market prices. In order to compete with petrochemical polymers, the production costs of PEF has to be around 1500 $/tonne. For the base case, all three cases approach this level of 1500 $/tonne; the production costs for Case I are 1495 $/tonne PEF and Case II at 1555 $/tonne PEF. For Case III, the costs are calculated to be negative (at −131) $/tonne. This is because PEF is not the main product within Case III, as dimethyl ether (DME) and methyl levulinate (ML) account for 75% of the product basket. The results show that the production of PEF can become a competitive alternative for petrochemical PET, under the condition of large scale production, proper price levels for the by‐products FEE and ML, and the availability of sustainable harvested wheat straw at an assumed cost between 50 and 150 $/tonne. Considering also the improved material performance of PEF and a potentially more favorable greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint, PEF produced from biomass may become a superior plastic to PET produced from petrochemical feedstocks. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

The Role of Contagion in the American Housing Boom

This paper investigates whether price spillovers across metropolitan areas were an important factor in the spreading of the last housing boom. We estimate the magnitude of those spillovers by measuring price changes in a focal market following positive shocks to neighboring markets. To identify shocks to neighboring markets, we exploit sharp structural breaks in house price growth rates. There is strong evidence of spillovers following such shocks. These effects arise mostly from very close neighbors and imply an elasticity of focal market price changes to nearest neighbor price changes of 0.15-0.33. Changes in local fundamentals cannot explain these spillovers.

Credit for equity investment and stock market volatility: evidence of variance causality

This paper investigates the causal relationship between stock market price changes and banks' loans for equity investment in Saudi capital markets using Granger's causality test and cross-correlation function (CCF) of standardised residuals. The findings in the paper show that the mean causality between the two capital markets is insignificant whereas the variance causality is significant. This result implies that the effect of news transmission between the two markets has no significant impact on these markets, but there is significant evidence of volatility transmission between the two markets. This means that public information (or news) held by the market participants has insignificant impact on stock price change but unexpected shocks on either market have significant spillover effects. A policy implication of such finding is that to contain irregular surprise shocks on Saudi stock market it is required stronger surveillance on portfolio managers' speculative and manipulative behaviour.

On possible origins of trends in financial market price changes

We investigate possible origins of the trends in financial markets, where trend we refer to as is a relatively long-term fluctuation observed in price change (price movement), using a simple deterministic threshold model that contains no external driving force term to generate trends forcibly. We find that the trend can be generated by this simple model without any external driving force. Furthermore, from thorough numerical simulations, we obtain two following results: (i) a trend of monotonic increase or decrease can be generated only by dealers’ minuscule price updates for the next deal trying to follow an expected forthcoming direction of price change, (ii) non-monotonic trends spontaneously emerge when dealers cannot obtain accurate information about the number of dealers participating in the next deal. We conclude from these results that the emergence of trends is not necessarily generated by an external driving force but by a natural outcome of the accumulation of minuscule price updates of individual dealers with insufficient information about the next deal.

The Application of Wavelet Neural Network in Prediction of the Fish Price

The market fish price is an important factor that affects the income of fishermen, so how to accurately analyze and predict the fish pricet o obtain huge profits has caught people's attention. As science advances, various price forecasting and analysis methods have come into being. How to build a prediction theories and models with relatively high success rate has been the study of many scholars over the years. With the development of artificial intelligence, neural networks have become an important tool of predicting and analyzing changes in market prices. Neural networks are important artificial intelligence technology, which have simple structures, but are able to solve complicated problems. They have strong applicability in predicting the mature index fluctuations in a short period. This paper considers some shortcomings and deficiencies the BP network prototype, which tries to use the wavelet Functions to replace the excitation function in the traditional BP algorithm on the basis of a network of neurons and then forms into WNN. We can verify the feasibility of WNN by perch price forecasts, and then this method is used in price forecasts of the three main fish of the Ulungur Lake Aquatic, to provide the basis for the aquatic base decision

Accounting for enforcement costs in the spatial allocation of marine zones.

Marine fish stocks are in many cases extracted above sustainable levels, but they may be protected through restricted-use zoning systems. The effectiveness of these systems typically depends on support from coastal fishing communities. High management costs including those of enforcement may, however, deter fishers from supporting marine management. We incorporated enforcement costs into a spatial optimization model that identified how conservation targets can be met while maximizing fishers' revenue. Our model identified the optimal allocation of the study area among different zones: no-take, territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs), or open access. The analysis demonstrated that enforcing no-take and TURF zones incurs a cost, but results in higher species abundance by preventing poaching and overfishing. We analyzed how different enforcement scenarios affected fishers' revenue. Fisher revenue was approximately 50% higher when territorial user rights were enforced than when they were not. The model preferentially allocated area to the enforced-TURF zone over other zones, demonstrating that the financial benefits of enforcement (derived from higher species abundance) exceeded the costs. These findings were robust to increases in enforcement costs but sensitive to changes in species' market price. We also found that revenue under the existing zoning regime in the study area was 13-30% lower than under an optimal solution. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for both the benefits and costs of enforcement in marine conservation, particularly when incurred by fishers.

FORENSIC SPORTS ANALYTICS: DETECTING AND PREDICTING MATCH-FIXING IN TENNIS

Despite some degree of lingering friction between sports leagues and wagering, the eradication of corruption in sports is one issue in which the interests of sports governing bodies, reputable gambling businesses, entities affiliated with the sports industry, and law enforcement are allied. This paper aims to: (i) detect match-fixing corruption in tennis and (ii) predict such match-fixing before it occurs. We first compare proxy measures of effort in fair matches versus possibly unfair matches – matches played in the first round, where wagering-induced manipulation is more likely. The results show that players exert less effort (tanking) in the first round, even when adjusting for the slightly greater difference in skill level in such matches. We next determine whether the gambling markets were able to identify fixing, tanking, or other types of manipulation before the match was played. Using two predictive tennis models (ELO, Common-Opponent) to determine the fair trading price of a tennis match, we find prima facie evidence of the betting markets being affected, with an average of 23 matches per year likely being manipulated or outright fixed each year. Finally, we determine whether fixed matches can be identified before they are played using predictive modeling and by observing real-time market price changes. We conclude that when the betting price has a large irrational move away from the fair model-predicted price, the move is indicative of a fixed match before it is played.

The relative information content of cash flows and earnings affected by their extremity

Purpose – Many studies examine the relative information content of earnings and cash flows from operations. Most studies find that earnings have higher information content than cash flows. An interesting question that follows is whether these findings hold after controlling the extremity of earnings and cash flows. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative information content of earnings and cash flows in the following four different cases: first, moderate earnings vs moderate cash flows, second, extreme earnings vs moderate cash flows, third, moderate earnings vs extreme cash flows, and fourth, extreme earnings vs extreme cash flows. Design/methodology/approach – To assess the relative information content of earnings and cash flows for each of the four cases mentioned above, the authors compare the explanatory power for regression of returns on unexpected earnings relative to regression of returns on unexpected cash flows. Therefore, the author compares the adjusted R2 of the model with earnings variables and the model with cash flows variables using Vuong's test, that examines the statistical significance of the difference between adjusted R2s of the rival (non-nested) models, and interpret a statistically higher adjusted R2 as an indicator for higher relative information content. Findings – The results show that: first, when both earnings and cash flows are moderate, earnings are more highly associated with stock market price changes than cash flows, second, when both earnings and cash flows are extreme, earnings also have greater relative information content than cash flows, third, when the extremity differs between earnings and cash flows, the moderate variable is superior to the other extreme variable in explaining security returns. These results suggest that earnings are definitely more value relevant than cash flows. However, only in cases when cash flows from operations are moderate and earnings are extreme, cash flows possess higher information content than earnings. Practical implications – The explanatory power for stock returns will be higher for earnings or cash flows depending on which is more highly persistent. This result reverses the conventional finding of the superiority of earnings over cash flows in explaining security returns. Originality/value – In contrast to previous studies, the authors control for the extremity of earnings and cash flows when evaluating the relative information content of earnings and cash flows from operations.

Elasticities of Supply for the US Natural Gas Market

In this paper we investigate natural gas producer's reactions to changes in market prices. We estimate price elasticities of aggregated supply in the most competitive market for natural gas: the United States. Using monthly time series data form 1987 to 2012 our analysis is based on an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound Cointegration approach to obtain short and long-run elasticities of natural gas supply. Results suggest that natural gas producers in a competitive market are not able to react to prices in the very short-run but respond inelastic in the long-run. These findings are not only of great value for policy makers but also for gas market modelers.

Article 55 on Open-Price Contract: A Wider Interpretation Necessary?

This article analyses open-price mechanism under the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) 1980. It proposes for a wider interpretation of Article 55 of the CISG. Currently, the CISG compromises to the preference of its Member States by allowing contracting parties a choice; either to fix price, or to leave price open in a contract of sale. Such option under the CISG is seen under two distinguished provisions, whereby contracting parties may choose to be bound either by a fixed-price term in Article 14(1), or by an open-price term under Article 55. While open-price mechanism could protect the validity of long-term business dealings, the CISG courts tend to validate open-price term dealings under Article 55 subject to the fulfilment of Article 14(1). Hence a more flexible interpretation of Article 55 of the CISG could be given since the current interpretation does not actually allow a workable open-price mechanism in times of rapid price changes. In the spirit of upholding friendly international business, this article suggests that not only both provisions should be interpreted separately, but also the scope of Article 55 could be extended to cover more cases of open-price contracts affected by market price changes. Keywords: CISG, Open price, Article 14, Article 55, sale of goods

Transformation processes in farming systems and surrounding areas of Inle Lake, Myanmar, during the last 40 years

Inle Lake in Eastern Myanmar is strongly affected by environmental effects of rapid population growth and an increase in the agricultural and tourist sector. To identify land use and land cover changes (LUCC), a post-classification comparison method was employed using historical Corona images (1968) and Landsat data (1989, 2000 and 2009). A supervised classification was performed for the Landsat datasets, whereas a visual interpretation was used for the Corona images.During the last 40 years, the dominant landscape transformation processes were urbanization (+203%), crop expansion (+34%) with a particular increase of floating gardens (+390%), land abandonment (+167%), deforestation (−49%) and wetland losses in marshlands (−83%) and waterbodies (−16%). The main driving forces of LUCC appeared to be population increase, industrial activities, government policies, widespread rural poverty and changes in market prices and access.

The Prediction of Shadow Price Based on Grey Theory

The shadow price is based on price changes in market prices, "price estimate", which still lag behind the changes in the market price.The paper calculated shadow price sensitive to changes in resource pricesdegrees, through the gray theory GM (1,1) model forecast the market price, and speculated that the estimated price of the next period resources.

Market integration and price transmission in consumer markets of developing countries

World prices for agricultural commodities surged in 2006–08, and then again in 2011–12. In many developing countries, consumer prices for staple foods, such as bread and rice, mirrored these movements. This paper examines whether prices in urban consumer markets within developing countries are co-integrated with prices in world agricultural commodity markets. Using a single equation error correction model, we examine the response of consumer prices for wheat, rice, maize, and sorghum to changes in world market prices and exchange rates in urban centers of the developing world. Analyzing over 60 country/commodity pairings, we find that developing countries’ consumer markets are co-integrated with world markets. Yet, we also find that the transmission of changes in both world prices and real exchange rates to domestic consumer prices is not high, and that the movement of domestic consumer prices to new equilibrium with world prices after a shock to the latter is relatively slow.