Quantitative market timing strategies are not consistently profitable when applied to 15 major commodity futures series. We conduct the most comprehensive study of quantitative trading rules in this market setting to date. We consider over 7000 rules, employ two alternative bootstrapping methodologies, account for data-snooping bias, and consider different time periods. We cannot rule out the possibility that trading rules compliment some other trading strategy or that some traders may have success using a specific rule on its own, but we do conclusively show that none of these rules beat the market any more than expected given random data variation.

A recent “revisionist” literature characterizes the pronounced rise in U.S. wage inequality since 1980 as an “episodic” event of the first half of the 1980s driven by nonmarket factors (particularly a falling real minimum wage) and concludes that continued increases in wage inequality since the late 1980s substantially reflect the mechanical confounding effects of changes in labor force composition. Analyzing data from the Current Population Survey for 1963 to 2005, we find limited support for these claims. The slowing of the growth of overall wage inequality in the 1990s hides a divergence in the paths of upper-tail (90/50) inequality—which has increased steadily since 1980, even adjusting for changes in labor force composition—and lower-tail (50/10) inequality, which rose sharply in the first half of the 1980s and plateaued or contracted thereafter. Fluctuations in the real minimum wage are not a plausible explanation for these trends since the bulk of inequality growth occurs above the median of the wage distribution. Models emphasizing rapid secular growth in the relative demand for skills—attributable to skill-biased technical change—and a sharp deceleration in the relative supply of college workers in the 1980s do an excellent job of capturing the evolution of the college/high school wage premium over four decades. But these models also imply a puzzling deceleration in relative demand growth for college workers in the early 1990s, also visible in a recent “polarization” of skill demands in which employment has expanded in high-wage and low-wage work at the expense of middle-wage jobs. These patterns are potentially reconciled by a modified version of the skill-biased technical change hypothesis that emphasizes the role of information technology in complementing abstract (high-education) tasks and substituting for routine (middle-education) tasks.

The literature suggests that staggered boards may have two opposite effects on earnings management: the expropriation view emphasizes the exacerbating effect, whereas the quiet life view advocates the mitigating effect. We use two approaches to examine this issue: a small-sample test based on whether firms are accused of committing financial reporting fraud, and a large-sample test based on the absolute value of unexpected accruals. We find that staggered boards are associated with lower likelihoods of committing fraud and smaller magnitudes of absolute unexpected accruals. Consistent with prior studies, we also find that staggered boards are negatively associated with firm value. The results suggest that staggered boards may enable managers to enjoy the quiet life and lessen their motivation to increase firm value; as a consequence, managers are not motivated to manage earnings.

In many markets, changes in the spot price are partially predictable. We show that when this is the case: (1) although unbiased, traditional regression estimates of the minimum variance hedge ratio are inefficient, (2) estimates of the riskiness of both hedged and unhedged positions are biased upward, and (3) estimates of the percentage risk reduction achievable through hedging are biased downward. For natural gas cross hedges, we find that both the inefficiency and bias are substantial. We further find that incorporating the expected change in the spot price, as measured by the futures-spot price spread at the beginning of the hedge, into the regression results in a substantial increase in efficiency and reduction in the bias.

Suppose that each player in a game is rational, each player thinks the other players are rational, and so on. Also, suppose that rationality is taken to incorporate an admissibility requirement-that is, the avoidance of weakly dominated strategies. Which strategies can be played? We provide an epistemic framework in which to address this question. Specifically, we formulate conditions of rationality and mth-order assumption of rationality (RmAR) and rationality and common assumption of rationality (RCAR). We show that (i) RCAR is characterized by a solution concept we call a self-admissible set; (ii) in a type structure, RmAR is characterized by the set of strategies that survive m + 1 rounds of elimination of inadmissible strategies; (iii) under certain conditions, RCAR is impossible in a complete structure.

Suppose that each player in a game is rational, each player thinks the other players are rational, and so on. Also, suppose that rationality is taken to incorporate an admissibility requirement—that is, the avoidance of weakly dominated strategies. Which strategies can be played? We provide an epistemic framework in which to address this question. Specifically, we formulate conditions of rationality and mth-order assumption of rationality (RmAR) and rationality and common assumption of rationality (RCAR). We show that (i) RCAR is characterized by a solution concept we call a “self-admissible set”; (ii) in a “complete” type structure, RmAR is characterized by the set of strategies that survive m+1 rounds of elimination of inadmissible strategies; (iii) under certain conditions, RCAR is impossible in a complete structure.

Liquidity providers on the NYSE make faster quote adjustments towards equilibrium spreads and depths than they do on NASDAQ. Liquidity providers in both markets make faster spread and depth adjustments for stocks with more frequent trading, greater return volatility, higher prices, smaller market capitalizations, and smaller trade sizes. We find that stocks with greater information-based trading and in more competitive trading environments exhibit faster quote adjustments. The speed of quote adjustment is faster after decimalization in both markets. These results are robust and not driven by differences in stock attributes between the two markets or time periods. Overall, our results indicate that stock attributes, market structure, and tick size exert a significant impact on the speed of quote adjustment.

This paper investigates the valuation and hedging of spread options on two commodity prices which in the long run are in dynamic equilibrium (i.e., cointegrated). The spread exhibits properties different from its two underlying commodity prices and should therefore be modelled directly. This approach offers significant advantages relative to the traditional two price methods since the correlation between two asset returns is notoriously hard to model. In this paper, we propose a two factor model for the spot spread and develop pricing and hedging formulae for options on spot and futures spreads. Two examples of spreads in energy markets – the crack spread between heating oil and WTI crude oil and the location spread between Brent blend and WTI crude oil – are analyzed to illustrate the results.

This paper provides the first real-world evidence of Giffen behavior, i.e., upward sloping demand. Subsidizing the prices of dietary staples for extremely poor households in two provinces of China, we find strong evidence of Giffen behavior for rice in Hunan, and weaker evidence for wheat in Gansu. The data provide new insight into the consumption behavior of the poor, who act as though maximizing utility subject to subsistence concerns. We find that their elasticity of demand depends significantly, and nonlinearly, on the severity of their poverty. Understanding this heterogeneity is important for the effective design of welfare programs for the poor.

A key issue in monetary policymaking is the appropriate division of labor between the profes? sional staff of the central bank and the appointed policymakers. Lars E. O. Svensson (1999) argues that the appropriate role of a policymaking group, such as the Federal Open Market Com? mittee (FOMC) in the United States, is to make judgments about social welfare, taking as given the likely outcomes of different policies as esti? mated by the staff. In this division, the staff is relied upon to assess current and prospective economic conditions and to forecast the effects of different policies. Policymakers' only role is to decide which of the various options should be chosen.