Centre for Financial Markets Working Papers

The early years of the 21st century have been a difficult and challenging time for the managed funds industry. The neglected history of managed funds reveals prior episodes of sustained growth, questionable practices, upheaval and inevitably, regulation. The first fully diversified managed fund appeared in Britain in 1868, and the industry remained largely a British preserve until the rise of the investment company and the mutual fund in the United States during the 1920s. This paper documents the features of the early trusts, discusses the rise of the industry and the challenges it survived in the early years, and draws parallels with facets of the finance industry of today.

We address the venture capital financing issue from the firm’s perspective. Using survey data for 110 new technology-based firms (NTBFs) in the Irish software sector, we assess the extent to which 5 human capital and 3 other variables determine the firm’s use of venture capital. Education of the lead founder to degree level is the only significant human capital variable, and it is directly related to the likelihood of being venture capital-backed. Venture capital-backed firms have significantly higher start-up costs, and their founders are less averse to loss of control than non-venture capital-backed firms. We conclude that the use of venture capital is dictated largely by the willingness of founders to relinquish control.

This paper empirically analyses risk in the Euro relative to other currencies. Comparisons are made between a sub period encompassing the final transitional stage to full monetary union with a sub period prior to this. Stability in the face of speculative attack is examined using Extreme Value Theory to obtain estimates of tail exchange rate changes. The findings are encouraging. The Euro’s common risk measures do not deviate substantially from other currencies. Also, the Euro is stable in the face of speculative pressure. For example, the findings consistently show the Euro being less risky than the Yen, and having similar inherent risk to the Deutsche Mark, the currency that it is essentially replacing.

In recent years the finance industry from an academic and practitioner perspective has placed heavy emphasis on the analysis of volatility models. This is understandable given the importance that volatility plays for these agents and the fact that it is not directly observable representing somewhat of a holy grail. In particular, volatility modelling feeds directly into risk management practices.

We examine the performance and diversification potential of 332 funds of hedge funds (FOHFs) for the period from January 1990 to May 2003. Consistent with prior studies, we find that FOHFs appear to underperform the hedge fund index on a risk-adjusted basis. However, FOHFs have characteristics that offset their apparent underperformance. Their returns do not suffer from negative skewness that is a feature of many hedge fund strategies. In addition, we find that FOHFs have lower correlations (than the hedge fund index) with stock indices in both bull and bear markets, making them a better diversification tool in equity portfolios. For bond portfolios, however, FOHFs have no diversification advantage over hedge fund indexing.

Using a sample of 117 Irish software companies, we examine the capital structure of new technology-based firms. Consistent with the findings on financing for other small businesses, internal funds are the most important source of funding in new technology-based firms. However, in apparent contradiction to the pecking order hypothesis, the use of debt is rare and equity financing is the prime source of external finance. By questioning chief executive officers via survey on their perceptions and opinions on various financing issues, we are able to conclude that in many cases software firm founders prefer outside equity to debt. The dearth of debt in the capital structure of new technology-based firms cannot be wholly explained by financing constraints due to information asymmetries in the banking sector.

Key to the imposition of appropriate minimum capital requirements on a daily basis requires accurate volatility estimation. Here, measures are presented based on discrete estimation of aggregated high frequency UK futures realisations underpinned by a continuous time framework. Squared and absolute returns are incorporated into the measurement process so as to rely on the quadratic variation of a diffusion process and be robust in the presence of fat tails. The realized volatility estimates incorporate the long memory property. The dynamics of the volatility variable are adequately captured. Resulting rescaled returns are applied to minimum capital requirement calculations.

Using a time-varying approach, this paper examines the dynamics of volatility in the REIT sector. The results highlight the attractiveness and suitability of using GARCH based approaches in the modeling of daily REIT volatility. The paper examines the influencing factors on REIT volatility, documenting the return and volatility linkages between REIT sub-sectors and also examines the influence of other US equity series. The results contrast with previous studies of monthly REIT volatility. Linkages within the REIT sector and with related sectors such as value stocks are diminished, while the general influence of market sentiment, coming through the large cap indices is enhanced. This would indicate that on a daily basis general market sentiment plays a more fundamental role than more intuitive relationships within the capital markets.

Accurate volatility modelling is paramount for optimal risk management practices. One stylized feature of financial volatility that impacts the modelling process is long memory explored in this paper for alternative risk measures, observed absolute and squared returns for high frequency intraday UK futures. Volatility series for three different asset types, using stock index, interest rate and bond futures are analysed. Long memory is strongest for the bond contract. Long memory is always strongest for the absolute returns series and at a power transformation of k < 1. The long memory findings generally incorporate intraday periodicity. The APARCH model incorporating seven related GARCH processes generally models the futures series adequately documenting ARCH, GARCH and leverage effects.

We investigate the influence of international interest rate changes on the Dublin inter bank money market rates (Dibor). Specifically, we analyse the impact of (un)expected changes in German(Euro) area and US policy rates on various Dibor rates between 1991 to 2002 in an event type study. Our decomposition of (un)expected changes of policy rates are based on future markets and is akin to Kuttner (2000). Overall, our results suggest that Dibor rates respond positively and significantly to unanticipated Euro and US policy rate changes while expected changes have an insignificant impact.

Accurate forecasting of risk is the key to successful risk management techniques. Using the largest stock index futures from twelve European bourses, this paper presents VaR measures based on their unconditional and conditional distributions for single and multi-period settings. These measures underpinned by extreme value theory are statistically robust explicitly allowing for fat-tailed densities. Conditional tail estimates are obtained by adjusting the unconditional extreme value procedure with GARCH filtered returns. The conditional modelling results in iid returns allowing for the use of a simple and efficient multi-period extreme value scaling law.The paper examines the properties of these distinct conditional and unconditional trading models. The paper finds that the biases inherent in unconditional single and multi-period estimates assuming normality extend to the conditional setting.

Extreme asset price movements have major consequences for an economy’s financial stability and monetary policies. The recent equity price movements associated with financial crises appear to be more pronounced and policy makers need to make accurate predictions of the frequency and severity of these events. This paper investigates the extreme behaviour of equity market returns and quantifies the possible losses associated with financial crises. Extreme value theory that models tail realisations only is applied to equity indices representing American, Asian and European markets. The paper finds that the tail realisations are adequately modelled with the fat-tailed Fréchet distribution. Furthermore tail realisations associated with the downside of a distribution are greater than the upside.

We examine the return distributions of 332 funds of hedge funds and associated indices. Over half of the sample is significantly skewed according to the skewness statistic, and these are split 50/50 positive and negative. However, we argue that the skewness statistic can lead to erroneous inferences regarding the nature of the return distribution, because the test statistic is based on the normal distribution. Using a series of tests that make minimal assumptions about the shape of the underlying distribution, we find very little skewness in the returns of funds of funds, and when we do find evidence of asymmetry it is close to the mean rather than in the tails.

The deregulation of electricity industries has generally separated the provision of generation from its subsequent transmission. However, the physical nature of electricity generation and delivery creates special problems for the design of efficient markets, notably the need to manage delivery in real time and the resulting volatile congestion costs. In theory, two broad approaches exist for implementing transmission congestion management: (i) a centralised point-to-point (PTP) structure, in which derivative transmission congestion contracts (TCCs) are traded, and (ii) a decentralised approach, in which trading rights exist only on the heavily congested links of the network. Since the latter mechanism focuses on the bottlenecks of the grid, which are fixed by the underlying network topology, it defines a small number of tradable rights, thereby enabling market participants to hedge transmission congestion risk more efficiently. By contrast, while the TCC-based approach, as implemented in New York, provides market participants with a potentially effective hedge against volatile congestion rents, it, nevertheless, results in prices paid for TCCs that are systematically divergent from the resulting congestion rents for distant locations and at high prices. Such inefficiency can be explained in part by the low liquidity of TCC markets and the deviation of TCC feasibility requirements from actual energy flows. It could also be the case that market participants over-pay in this environment out of risk aversion. Analysis of data from the New York TCC markets from 2000 to 2001 indicates that, on aggregate, market participants were only slightly risk averse (or even risk seeking, depending on the utility function employed). As a result, the very design of these markets, rather than the behaviour of market participants, leads to the observed discrepancy between forward and spot prices.

Regardless of the form of restructuring, deregulated electricity industries share one common feature: the absence of any significant, rapid demand-side response to the wholesale (or, spot market) price. For a variety of reasons, electricity industries continue to charge most consumers an average cost based on regulated retail tariff from the era of vertical integration, even as the retailers themselves are forced to purchase electricity at volatile wholesale prices set in open markets. This results in considerable price risk for retailers, who are sometimes forbidden by regulators from signing hedging contracts. More importantly, because end-users do not perceive real-time (or even hourly or daily) fluctuations in the wholesale price of electricity, they have no incentive to adjust their consumption in response to price signals. Consequently, demand for electricity is highly inelastic, and electricity generation resources can be stretched to the point where system stability is threatened. This, then, facilitates many other problems associated with electricity markets, such as market power and price volatility. Indeed, economic theory suggests that even modestly price-responsive demand can remove the stress on generation resources and decrease spot prices. To test this theory, we use actual generator bid data from the New York control area to construct supply stacks, and intersect them with demand curves of various slopes to approximate different levels of demand elasticity. We then estimate the potential impact of real-time pricing on the equilibrium spot price and quantity. These results indicate the immediate benefits that could be derived from a more price-elastic demand. Such analysis can provide policymakers with a measure of how effective price-elastic demand can potentially reduce prices and maintain consumption within the capability of generation resources.

We use a very general multivariate GARCH-M model and G7 monthly data covering the 1957-2003 period to test for the impact of real and nominal macroeconomic uncertainty on inflation and output growth.Our evidence supports a number of important conclusions. First, in most countries output growth uncertainty is a positive determinant of the output growth rate. Second, there is mixed evidence regarding the effect of inflation uncertainty on inflation and output growth. Hence,uncertainty about the inflation rate is not necessarily detrimental to economic growth. Finally, there is mixed evidence on the effect of output uncertainty on inflation.

We examine the influence of US and UK macroeconomic and financial variables on Irish stock returns in a nonlinear framework. We allow for time variation via regime switching using a smooth transition regression (STR) model. Importantly we find that both US and UK stock returns are significant determinants of Irish returns. Further,US returns are an important transition variable. Additionally,we show that both the US industrial production growth and changesin short term interest rates play an important role in explaining Irish stock returns. A two transition variable model finds that US short term interest rate changes exert a secondary nonlinear influence on Irish returns. The significance of US variables is reflective of the influence of US investment in the Irish economy.

A quantity known as the Local Cross-Entropy (LCE) for a density is proposed, defined to be the local derivative of the Cross-Entropy between a density and a ’kernel-smoothed’ version of itself, with respect to bandwidth of the smoothing. This criterion is argued to be of the ’smoothness’ type and is also argued to be more sensible and ’natural’ than the frequently used ’Maximum Entropy’ criterion for many applications. When applied to price distributions in conjunction Options constraints the minimum LCE criterion is shown to produce estimates which share the best theoretical properties of the Maximum Entropy approach with the best practical properties of the estimators identified by Jackwerth and Rubinstein

The degree to which any deregulated market functions efficiently often depends on the ability of market agents to respond to fluctuating conditions. Many restructured electricity markets, however, have little demand response. We examine the implications for market operations when a risk-averse retailer's end-use consumers are allowed to perceive real-time variations in the electricity price. Using a market -equilibrium model, we find that price elasticity both increases the retailer's revenue risk exposure and decreases the spot price. Consequently, the overall impact of price- responsive demand on the electricity forward price is ambiguous.

We investigate the influence of foreign monetary policy decisions on the volatility of the Irish stock market. Specifically, we examine the influence of US monetary policy announcements on the ISEQ. We find evidence of the so called calm before the storm i.e. there appears to be a decline in volatility on the day prior to an FOMC meeting and a subsequent increase in volatility after the results of such meetings are made known. We also find evidence to suggest that ISEQ volatility is influenced by surprise changes in US monetary policy. Moreover, US monetary surprises appear to affect Irish stock return volatility asymmetrically. In particular, higher than expected US federal funds, tend to increase Irish stock return volatility. This paper represents an important step in addressing the issues of spillover identification between the US and the Irish stock market.