Long-term Exchange Research Articles

Assessing Interdependence Among Countries' Fundamentals and its Implications for Exchange Rate Misalignment Estimates: An Empirical Exercise Based on GVAR

Exchange rates are important macroeconomic prices and changes in these rates affect economic activity, prices, interest rates, and trade flows. Methodologies have been developed in empirical exchange rate misalignment studies to evaluate whether a real effective exchange is overvalued or undervalued. There is a vast body of literature on the determinants of long-term real exchange rates and on empirical strategies to implement the equilibrium norms obtained from the theoretical models. This study seeks to contribute to this literature by showing that the global vector autoregressions model (GVAR) proposed by Pesaran and co-authors can add relevant information to the literature on measuring exchange rate misalignment. Our empirical exercise suggests that the estimative exchange rate misalignment obtained from GVAR can be quite different to that using the traditional cointegrated time series techniques, which treat countries as detached entities. The differences between the two approaches are more pronounced for small and developing countries. Our results also suggest a strong interdependence among eurozone countries, as expected.

Phenomenon of Culture Convergence and Dwelling Houses in Southwest Multi-Ethnic Mixed Areas

The southwestern mountainous area distributes numerous minority groups, which have been inhabited showing the characters of large dispersion, small settlements and mixed together living method. After a long-term exchange and integration, the different ethnic groups have formed certain common features, also the types of dwelling buildings follow the same rule. For the common features of various ethnic groups dwellings, this paper tries to comprehensively interpret the influence of ethnic origin, mode of production, marriage form, ethnic relations, religious beliefs etc. on the dwelling houses in the mixed areas, in order to in-depth understand China's remote mountainous border region culture and minority culture.

Modelling the Responses of Carbon Fluxes to Climate Change in Northeast China Forests using IBIS

Assessing the long-term exchange of carbon dioxide between terrestrial and the atmosphere is an important priority of the current climate change research. In this regard, it is particularly significant to provide valid data on fluxes of carbon over representative ecosystems. In this study, we used a modified process-based terrestrial ecosystem model (Integrated Biosphere Simulator, IBIS), which represents biogeochemical and biophysical process, coupling the carbon, nitrogen and water cycles on each specific time steps, to generalize our understanding of the temporal and spatial variability of Net Primary Productivity (NPP), Net Ecosystem Productivity (NEP) and Soil Respiration (RS) over northeast China to climate change for the period 1961 to 2080. The model results demonstrate a powerful approach to integrate and expand our knowledge of climate changes on northeast China forest carbon dynamics now and in the future.

Are Offshore RMB Arrangements the Basis for a Long‐term Exchange Rate System without Convertibility?

AbstractThis paper discusses China's relatively new structure of dual onshore and offshore RMB markets. Its distinguishing feature is both offshore trading at exchange rates that are market determined and onshore trading at exchange rates anchored at the official spot rate with capital account inconvertibility. We note that thus far the CNH and CNY spot rates have largely tracked each other, suggesting that the shadow price on the convertibility constraint onshore and also the offshore diversification benefit is close to zero. However, this could change in the future. We discuss the potential for the offshore RMB market to grow with trade settlement and bilateral swap arrangements in RMB, which would provide a big enough pool of liquidity for the RMB to become a vehicle currency and reserve currency. These potential developments will be restrained by onshore inconvertibility, but moving to convertibility seemingly implies major change in China's financial structure and the offshore RMB arrangements are only a small first step along this path. Crucial in this evolution of arrangements will be future Chinese growth performance and the relative attractiveness of onshore inconvertible but offshore marketable RMB relative to the debt laden and slow growth currencies of the USA, the EU and Japan.

사과 생육기의 기온이 사과원의 NEE에 미치는 영향

Terrestrial ecosystem are a strong sink of carbon. Forest ecosystem, one of them, has been expected to play an important role in climate changing process by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide. On the other hand, agricultural ecosystem that consists mainly of annual crops is regarded as poor contributor to carbon accumulation, because its production (carbon hydrate) is decomposed into carbon at a short period, which is emitted to the atmosphere. However, it is thought that fruit tree plays a great role in decreasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, same as forest. Net ecosystem exchange of <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> (NEE) was measured to estimate carbon fixation capacity using an eddy covariance (EC) system method in 2 years from 2005 to 2006 at an apple orchard in Uiseong, Gyeongbuk. Average air temperature values were higher in 2006 than in 2005 during the dormant season, and lower by about <TEX>$5^{\circ}C$</TEX> over the growing season causing visible cold injuries. Accordingly, we investigated long-term exchange of carbon to determine how much difference of carbon fixation capacity was shown between 2006 and 2005 in terms of environmental and plant variables such as NEE, leaf area index (LAI), and Albedo. NEE was <TEX>$4.8Mg\;C\;ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$</TEX> in 2005 and <TEX>$4.7Mg\;C\;ha^{-1}yr^{-1}$</TEX> in 2006, respectively. Low temperature after July in 2006 decreased LAI values faster than those in 2005. Meanwhile, Albedo values were higher after July in 2006 than in 2005. These results show that the low temperature after July in 2006 apparently affected apple growth.

A Place in History: Albany in the Age of the Revolution, 1775–1825 (review)

A Place in History: in Age Revolution, 1775-1825. By Warren Roberts. (Albany, NY: State University Press, 2010, Pp. 335. Cloth, $29.95.)Reviewed by Ruma ChopraWith photographs churches, monuments, and mansions in today's and with stories his ten-year personal journey uncovering richness Albany's past, Roberts lovingly reframes city on Hudson. For Roberts, is place filled with memories transformative revolutionary battles, city once inhabited by elite families who lived in opulence and sustained long-term aristocratic friendships with colonial notables and French revolutionaries.Roberts emphasizes ties between and France. He begins with Battle Saratoga in October, 1777, the turning point American (1) and considered by some to be most important battle last thousand (84) because this battle brought French into an alliance with rebels. Although Saratoga was 25 miles to north Albany, Roberts suggests that shadow victory Saratoga set Albany's shine in motion, and established long-term exchange between and Paris.According to Roberts, Albany's geography and river systems contributed to revolutionaries' victory in 1777. Its elite inhabitants invited attention rebel military commanders and future founding fathers. As important, served as eastern terminus for Erie Canal, project that inaugurated transportation revolution and helped to lay foundation for global economy. By following terrain, aristocrats, and construction projects in Albany, Roberts traces political, cultural, and economic development United States. He portrays formation an emerging democracy, culture urbanity and manners, and an industrializing economy.Roberts's early stories are full interest and complexity. The cast characters is vast. They include familiar revolutionary figures such as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold, General John Burgoyne, and Marquis de Lafayette, as well as less familiar New York elites such as Gouverneur Morris, Philip Schuyler, and Stephen Van Rensselaer. Stubbornly drawing attention to Albany's connection with France, Roberts devotes one full chapter to discussion French aristocrat, Madame de La Tour Du Pin, who fled French Revolution and spent two years in (1794-1796). What connects this trans-Atlantic cast is sophistication, refinement, and elite standing. Of course, each notable spent time visiting Albany's elite or living in vicinity Albany's inner circle. The book could easily be titled Albany and its Aristocrats: 1775-1825.At times, Roberts attempts to elevate Albany's historical status seem forced. For instance, Alexander Hamilton appears here because he married daughter Philip Schuyler, an aristocrat. Roberts's exploration key men in founding era - and especially their sexual liaisons - is fascinating reading. We learn about Alexander Hamilton's affair with his sister-in-law, Angelica, and with Maria Reynolds; his later repentance and loyalty to his wife; and too briefly, his turn to Christianity. But it is unclear why we are told in such detail that Angelica and Alexander worked out secret code in their correspondence (129) or that Maria Reynolds was woman of no worth or character whatever, and Hamilton had shamed himself in his involvement with her (135).Because Battle Saratoga led to French alliance with revolutionaries, Roberts observes that American and French Revolutions are joined at hip (13). Yet connections seem artificial. Gouverneur Morris appears in book because he visited in July 1777, and because he was in Paris for five years, a period that coincided almost exactly with French (101). …

The role of formal contracts with weak legal enforcement: A study in the Chinese context

This article explores in depth the mechanisms through which formal contracts and relational governance complement each other, focusing on the role played by formal contracts in transitional economies characterized by weak legal enforcement and a culture oriented around informal ties. The findings, drawn from case studies conducted at five firms across China, suggest that formal contracts are used even when they are not legally enforceable because by defining the rights and obligations in an exchange, contracts reinforce reciprocity in long-term exchange relationships. Although this role of contracts has not previously been clarified in the literature, it is particularly important in China because its cultural traditions prioritize reciprocity. The findings have implications for developing a theory of inter-firm relationship governance and optimal contracting, particularly in transitional economies.

Comment on Moffett: "Supercolonies of billions in an invasive ant: What is a society?"

Comment on Moffett: "Supercolonies of billions in an invasive ant: What is a society?"

Slow Pass-through Around the World: A New Import for Developing Countries?

Developing countries traditionally experience pass-through of exchange rate changes that is greater and more rapid than high-income countries experience. This is true equally of the determination of prices of imported goods, prices of local competitors’ products, and the general CPI. But developing countries in the 1990s experienced a rapid downward trend in the degree of pass-through and speed of adjustment, more so than did high-income countries. As a consequence, slow and incomplete pass-through is no longer exclusively a luxury of industrial countries. Using a new data set—prices of eight narrowly defined brand commodities, observed in 76 countries—we find empirical support for some of the factors that have been hypothesized in the literature, but not for others. Significant determinants of the pass-through coefficient include per capita incomes, bilateral distance, tariffs, country size, wages, long-term inflation, and long-term exchange rate variability. Some of these factors changed during the 1990s. Part (and only part) of the downward trend in pass-through to imported goods prices, and in turn to competitors’ prices and the CPI, can be explained by changes in the monetary environment—including a fall in long-term inflation. Real wages work to reduce pass-through to competitors’ prices and the CPI, confirming the hypothesized role of distribution and retail costs in pricing to market. Rising distribution costs, due perhaps to the Balassa-Samuelson-Baumol effect, could contribute to the decline in the pass-through coefficient in some developing countries.

Genetic consequences of interglacial isolation in a steppe bird

In response to climate changes that have occurred during Pleistocene glacial cycles, taxa associated to steppe vegetation might have followed a pattern of historical evolution in which isolation and fragmentation of populations occurred during the short interglacials and expansion events occurred during the long glacial periods, in contrast to the pattern described for temperate species. Here, we use molecular genetic data to evaluate this idea in a steppe bird with Palaearctic distribution, the little bustard (Tetrax tetrax). Overall, extremely low genetic diversity and differentiation was observed among eight little bustard populations distributed in Spain and France. Mismatch distribution analyses showed that most little bustard populations expanded during cooling periods previous to, and just after, the last interglacial period (127,000–111,000years before present), when steppe habitats were widespread across Europe. Coalescent-based methods suggested that glacial expansions have resulted in substantial admixture in Western Europe due to the existence of different interglacial refugia. Our results are consistent with a model of evolution and genetic consequences of Pleistocene cycles with low between-population genetic differentiation as a result of short-term isolation periods during interglacials and long-term exchange during glacial periods.

Respiratorische Erkrankungen bei Früh- und Neugeborenen – Aktuelle Diagnostik und Therapie

Respiratory disorders remain a major problem in postnatal adaptation. In term neonates, an increased incidence of the risk for transient tachypnoea of the neonate has been observed during the past decade, most likely secondary to an increased usage of primary Caesarean section. The disorder is mainly caused by a delayed resorption of foetal lung fluid. Further disorders in term neonates include meconium aspiration syndrome and congenital diaphragmatic hernia leading to impaired gas exchange and pulmonary hypertension. In preterm neonates, respiratory distress syndrome is the main disorder leading to severe acute and long-term impaired gas exchange. Prenatal administration of glucocorticoids and postnatal surfactant therapy remains an established principle in perinatal care for very preterm neonates. The most relevant long-term sequelae, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, is currently being observed in about 15% of preterms with less than 32 weeks of gestation and is associated with severe pulmonary and extrapulmonary consequences. Due to the overall improvement in perinatal care, respiratory disorders still remain a major problem in pulmonary adaptation. However, mortality secondary to neonatal lung failure has been decreased substantially by the improvements in the whole field of perinatal medicine.

THE TERM STRUCTURE OF CURRENCY HEDGE RATIOS

This paper investigates the variance minimizing currency forward hedge of an exporting firm that is exposed to different sources of risk. In an empirical study, we quantify the corresponding hedge ratios of a "typical" German firm for different hedge horizons. Based on cointegrated vector autoregressive models of prices, interest rates and exchange rates, we show that hedge ratios decrease substantially with the hedge horizon for different currencies, reaching values of one half or less for a ten-years horizon. Our findings can partly explain underhedging of long-term exchange rate exposures and have important implications for the design of risk management strategies.

Relationship Duration and Returns to Brokerage in the Staffing Sector

We examine how long-term relationships affect brokers' returns, using project-level pricing data from an information technology staffing firm. We argue that long-term relationships between brokers and their counterparties affect both acquisition of private information and bargaining power, helping brokers to create and capture economic value. The results show that the staffing firm is able to charge a higher price and capture a higher proportion of that price when it has a long-term relationship with the worker. We also show that the staffing firm's ability to generate returns from its relationships is constrained when the brokered parties (worker and client firm) have a long-term relationship with each other. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of market brokerage and long-term exchange relationships.

‘Thy Power to Declare’: Thelwall, Coleridge and the Politics of Collaboration

Given the increasing attention paid in recent years to the subject of literary collaboration, it is odd that so little notice has been taken of the history of the word. For even a brief glance at the OED undercuts surprisingly persistent scholarly misconceptions about the history of authorship. Far from disappearing with the rise of the so-called ‘regime’ of the author as ‘solitary genius’ in the late eighteenth century, as historians of authorship still too frequently assume, collaboration first appears in English at the heart of the Romantic period, imported from France by Henry Crabb Robinson in 1801, when he wrote in his diary of ‘a body of poor students called collaborateurs who assist the more wealthy but less advanced’. A year later, Jeremy Bentham anglicised the word, referring to his French editor and translator, Stephen Dumont, as a ‘collaborator of Mirabeau’s’. Through Dumont, Bentham himself collaborated with Mirabeau, part of the long-term exchange between French and English Enlightenment thought that laid the groundwork for Romanticism. Robinson too was a collaborator, one of the tireless band of chroniclers, cataloguers and confessors who together produced Romanticism as a ‘spirit of the age’. According to the OED, the specifically political definition of the word collaboration, as ‘traitorous cooperation with an enemy’, did not arise until the 1940s, in the context of the German occupation of Vichy France. Research reveals, however, that at its very origins collaboration already carried those same wartime connotations of national shame and betrayal, by virtue of the historical moment, transnational circumstances and subversive class dynamics of its first English use. To import a French word into English in order to invert hierarchies of wealth and authority was an inescapably political act at the turn of the nineteenth century; it implied, if not outright treason, then at the very least a dangerous rapprochement between nations at war. Just such a rapprochement did, however, occur in exactly 1801–02, in the shaky lead-up to the Peace of Amiens, the all-too-brief truce in the French Revolutionary Wars which, in the words of the English Jacobin John Thelwall, ‘tranquillized, for awhile, the passions of Europe’ and ‘gave to all parties, in this country, time to recover a portion, at least, of their bewildered senses’. In that hiatus Thelwall emerged from political exile to begin his long reconciliation of working-class activism with bourgeois reform; and his friend William Wordsworth was able to cross the widening channel between the French love of his revolutionary youth and the loyal English

Profiles of Grandmothers Providing Child Care to Their Grandchildren in South Korea

The purpose of this study is to describe the profiles of South Korean grandmothers who provide child care to their grandchildren using a nationally representative sample of 3,329 grandmothers between 45 and 79 years of age. We assess grandmothers’ personal characteristics, financial situation and perception, and social participation associated with the likelihood of providing full-time and part-time child care, in comparison to providing no child care. We also examine grandmother characteristics related to providing longer hours of child care among 420 caregiving grandmothers. The results of a multinomial logistic regression and multiple regression show that the following characteristics are significantly associated with the provision of full-time or longer child care: age, intergenerational coresidence, the projection of future inheritance, grandmaternal and maternal employment, interaction with close networks, and religious participation. The findings suggest preliminary support for the three models of intergenerational transfer theory, short-term exchange, long-term exchange, and altruism, to explain grandmatemal child care in South Korea.

Customer Protection Issues Related to Long-term Exchange Contracts and Financial Institutions

Customer Protection Issues Related to Long-term Exchange Contracts and Financial Institutions

Disclosing the Ethnographic Self

Disclosing the Ethnographic Self

The Valuation of Long-Term Exchange Options in the German Electricity Market

This paper analyzes the valuation of monthly Physical Transmission Rights (PTRs) on the German-Dutch interconnector. From a …nancial perspective, PTRs are exchange options written on the German and Dutch day-ahead electricity price. We extend the famous exchange option model by Margrabe (1978) and include jumps in the underlying prices. We develop a quasi closed-form solution for our exchange option model and compare its pricing performance to the basic model without jumps for all monthly PTRs between 2001 and 2008. Our results show that the inclusion of jumps signi…cantly reduces the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) between model and market prices. We further show that the inclusion of de-spiked prices into both models also improves their pricing performance. Overall, the empirical results show that monthly PTR options are clearly undervalued compared to model prices and even strictly cheaper than the corresponding futures contracts.

The upper(lower) boundaries of RMB in net foreign exchange reserves with penalty cost

This study intends to develop long-/short-term mathematical models to calculate the upper and lower boundaries of foreign exchange rate and the penalty cost interval by (i) using the weights derived from the volatility between the actual and expected exchange rates forecasted with three hypotheses, purchasing power parity, international Fisher effect, and forward rate as an unbiased predictor of the future spot exchange rate; (ii) focusing on the movement of foreign exchange reserves as the major consequence of trade imbalance to estimate the penalty cost on holding foreign exchange reserves a a basis to adjust the net foreign exchange reserves level. By analyzing the results, the short-term RMB foreign exchange rate boundary and penalty cost interval are 8.7134–7.9321 and US$323,276-$59,572 million respectively while the long-term RMB foreign exchange rate boundary and penalty cost interval are 8.3746–6.1177 and US$1 16,777-$ 1,78 1,235 million respectively

The Term Structure of Currency Hedge Ratios

Many firms face product price risk in foreign currency, uncertain costs in home currency and exchange rate risk. If prices and exchange rates in different countries interact, natural hedges of foreign exchange risk might result. If the effectiveness of such hedges depends on the hedge horizon, they might affect a firm's usage of foreign exchange derivatives and lead to a term structure of optimal hedge ratios. We analyze this issue by deriving the variance minimizing hedge position in currency forward contracts of an exporting firm that is exposed to different risks. In an empirical study, we quantify the term structure of hedge ratios for a ' typical ' German firm that is exporting either to the United States, the United Kingdom or Japan. Based on cointegrated vector autoregressive models of prices, interest rates and exchange rates, we show that the hedge ratio decreases substantially with the hedge horizon, reaching values of one half or less for a ten-years horizon. Our findings can (partly) explain the severe underhedging of long-term exchange rate exposures that is frequently observed and have important implications for the design of risk management strategies.