One of the most popular investment and trading strategies over the last decade, has been the currency carry trade, which allows traders and investors to buy high-yielding currencies in the Foreign Exchange spot market by borrowing, low or zero interest rate currencies in the form of pairs, such as the Australian Dollar/Japanese Yen (AUD/JPY), with the purpose of investing the proceeds afterwards into fixed-income securities.To be able to determine the causality between the returns of equity markets and the foreign exchange market, we choose to observe the sensitivity and influence of two equity indexes on several pairs involved in carry trading. The reason for studying these relationships is to further explain the causes of the uncovered interest parity puzzle, thus adding our contribution to the academic field through this thesis.To accomplish our goals, data was gathered for daily quotes of 16 different currency pairs, grouped by interest differentials, and two equity indexes, the S&P 500 and FTSE All-World, along with data for the VIX volatility index, for the 2003-2012 period. The data was collected from Thomson Reuters Datastream and the selected ten year span was divided into three different periods. This was done in order to discover the differences on how equity indexes relate to typical carry trade currency pairs, depending on market developments before, during and after the world financial crisis.The tests conducted on the collected data measured the correlations, influences and sensitivity for the 16 different currency pairs with the S&P 500 Index, the FTSE All-World index, and the volatility index between the years of 2003-2012. For influences and sensitivity, we performed Maximum Likelihood (ML) regressions with Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) [1,1], in Eviews software.After analyzing the results, we found that, during our chosen time period, the majority of currency pair daily returns are positively correlated with the equity indexes and that the FX pairs show greater correlation with the FTSE All-World, than with the S&P 500. Factors such as the interest rate of a currency and the choice of funding currency played an important role in the foreign exchange markets, during the ten year time span, for every yield group of FX pairs.Regarding the influence and sensitivity between currency pairs and the S&P 500 with its VIX index, we found that our models explanatory power seems to be stronger when the interest rate differential between the currency pairs is smaller. Our regression analysis also uncovered that the characteristics of an individual currency can show noticeable effects for the relationship between its pair and the two indexes.

Submitted by Fernando Junqueira de Assis Buratto (fernandojab@gmail.com) on 2017-09-18T15:06:20Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Versao_Final - Fernando Buratto.pdf: 2220875 bytes, checksum: aaaf1960784be71ac2001853d43ad4ac (MD5) / Rejected by Thais Oliveira (thais.oliveira@fgv.br), reason: Prezado Fernando, boa tarde. Para que possamos aprovar o seu trabalho, serão necessárias duas alterações: -Retirar o nome da Escola na contracapa (deixar somente na capa); -Corrigir a Ficha Catalográfica. Qualquer dúvida entre em contato pelo e-mail no mestradoprofissional@fgv.br ou ligue 3799-7764 Att, Thais Oliveira on 2017-09-18T18:22:39Z (GMT) / Submitted by Fernando Junqueira de Assis Buratto (fernandojab@gmail.com) on 2017-09-19T21:20:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Versao_Final - Fernando Buratto.pdf: 2219820 bytes, checksum: acf215f88771a0bc8605acb79234006c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Thais Oliveira (thais.oliveira@fgv.br) on 2017-09-19T21:50:03Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Versao_Final - Fernando Buratto.pdf: 2219820 bytes, checksum: acf215f88771a0bc8605acb79234006c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-20T12:49:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Versao_Final - Fernando Buratto.pdf: 2219820 bytes, checksum: acf215f88771a0bc8605acb79234006c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-22 / This paper intends to build a historical series for the risk premium of the Brazilian interest market and to develop a model that is capable of explaining it. This series construction will be based on the studies of Wright (2011) and Crump (2016), both of which use researches on the economic agents’ expectations for the main macroeconomic variables in the estimative of the risk premium of the interest market of other countries. After analyzing these studies, explanation models for the difference of the risk premium in the Brazilian interest market were estimated with weekly and monthly frequencies for several maturities of the interest curve. The results of these estimates have showed coefficients of determination varying from 15% to 59% and also indicate that rises in the risk premium of the Brazilian interest market are related to increases in the risk premium and in the expectation of interest in the US market, increases in the brazilian 5 years Credit Default Swap, depreciations in the real exchange rate per US dollar, increases in the volatility of inflation expectations and increases in the implied volatility of the interest rate and foreign exchange market. In addition, it is presented that the type of monetary cycle (rising or falling current interest) also influences the risk premium. / Este trabalho propõe construir uma série histórica para o prêmio de risco do mercado de juros brasileiro e desenvolver um modelo capaz de explicá-lo. A construção dessa série será baseada nos estudos de Wright (2011) e Crump (2016), que utilizam pesquisas sobre as expectativas dos agentes econômicos para as principais variáveis macroeconômicas na estimação do prêmio de risco do mercado de juros de outros países. Após a análise desses estudos, foram estimados modelos de explicação para a diferença do prêmio de risco no mercado de juros brasileiro, em diferença com frequências semanais e mensais para diversas maturidades da curva de juros. Os resultados dessas estimações mostraram coeficientes de explicação ou determinação que variam de 15% a 59% e apontam que elevações no prêmio de risco do mercado de juros brasileiro se relacionam com aumentos no prêmio de risco e na expectativa de juros do mercado norte-americano, aumentos de 5 anos no Credit Default Swap brasileiro, depreciações na taxa de câmbio pronto real por dólar americano, elevações da volatilidade da expectativa de inflação e aumentos na volatilidade implícita do mercado de opções de juros e câmbio. Além disso, apresenta-se que o tipo de ciclo monetário (juros correntes em queda ou alta) também influencia o prêmio de risco.

The focus of this study is to map, classify and analyse how different risk premia strategies that are fully implementable, perform and are affected by different economic environments. The results are of interest for practitioners who currently invest in or are thinking about investing in risk premia strategies. The study also makes a theoretical contribution since there currently is a lack of publicised work on this subject. A combination of the statistical methods cluster tree, spanning tree and principal component analysis are used to first categorise the investigated risk premia strategies into different clusters based on their correlation characteristics and secondly to find the strategies’ most important return drivers. Lastly, an analysis of how the clusters of strategies perform in different macroeconomic environments, here represented by inflation and growth, is conducted. The results show that the three most important drivers for the investigated risk premia strategies are a crisis factor, an equity directional factor and an interest rate factor. These three components explained about 18 percent, 14 percent and 10 percent of the variation in the data, respectively. The results also show that all four clusters, despite containing different types of risk premia strategies, experienced positive total returns during all macroeconomic phases sampled in this study. These results can be seen as indicative of a lower macroeconomic sensitivity among the risk premia strategies and more of an “alpha-like” behaviour. / Denna studie fokuserar på att kartlägga, klassificera och analysera hur riskpremie-strategier, som är fullt implementerbara, presterar och påverkas av olika makroekonomiska miljöer. Studiens resultat är av intresse för investerare som antingen redan investerar i riskpremiestrategier eller som funderar på att investera. Studien lämnar även ett teoretiskt bidrag eftersom det i dagsläget finns få publicerade verk som behandlar detta ämne. För att analysera strategierna har en kombination av de statistiska metoderna cluster tree, spanning  tree  och  principal  component  analysis  använts.  Detta  för  att  dels  kategorisera riskpremie-strategierna i olika kluster, baserat på deras inbördes korrelation, men också för att finna de faktorer som driver riskpremiestrategiernas avkastning. Slutligen har också en analys över hur de olika strategierna presterar under olika makroekonomiska miljöer genomförts där de makroekonomiska miljöerna representeras av inflation- och tillväxtindikatorer. Resultaten  visar  att  de  tre  viktigaste  faktorerna  som  driver  riskpremiestrategiernas avkastning  är  en  krisfaktor,  en  aktiemarknadsfaktor och  en  räntefaktor.  Dessa  tre  faktorer förklarar ungefär 18 procent, 14 procent och 10 procent av den undersökta datans totala varians. Resultaten  visar  också  att  alla  fyra  kluster,  trots  att  de  innehåller  olika  typer  av riskpremiestrategier,  genererade  positiv  avkastning  under  alla  makroekonmiska  faser  som studerades. Detta resultat ses som ett tecken på en lägre makroekonomisk känslighet bland riskpremiestrategier och mer av ett alfabeteende.

CAT-Bonds und Wetterderivate sind die Endprodukte eines Verbriefungprozesses, der nicht handelbare Risikofaktoren (Wetterschäden oder Naturkatastrophenschäden) in handelbare Finanzanlagen verwandelt. Als Ergebnis sind die Märkte für diese Produkte in der Regel unvollständig. Da geeignete Risikomaße in Bezug auf einen bestimmten Preis Voraussetzung sind zur Preisbestimmung, ist es notwendig den Marktpreis des Risikos (MPR), welcher ein wichtiger Parameter des zugehörigen äquivalenten Martingalmaß ist, zu berücksichtigen. Die Mehrheit der bisherigen Veröffentlichungen haben die Preise der nicht handelbaren Vermögenswerte mittels der Annahme geschätzt, dass der MPR gleich null ist. Diese Annahme verzerrt allerdings die Preise und wurde bisher noch nicht quantifiziert. Diese Doktorarbeit beschäftigt sich mit den Unterschieden zwischen dem historischen und dem risikoneutralen Verhalten der nicht handelbaren Basiswerte und gibt Einblicke in den Marktpreis für Wetterrisiko und die Wetterrisikoprämie. Diese Arbeit beginnt mit einer Darstellung der Instrumente zur Übertragung der Risiken, gefolgt von den finanziellen - statistischen Verfahren und endet mit einer Untersuchung reeller Daten, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf die implizierten Trigger-Intensitätsraten eines parametrischen CAT-Bond für Erdbeben und auf den MPR der Temperatur Derivate gelegt wird. / CAT bonds and weather derivatives are end-products of a process known as securitization that transform non-tradable (natural catastrophes or weather related) risk factors into tradable financial assets. As a result the markets for such products are typically incomplete. Since appropiate measures of the risk associated to a particular price become necessary for pricing, one essentially needs to incorporate the market price of risk (MPR), which is an important parameter of the associated equivalent martingale measure. The majority of papers so far has priced non-tradable assets assuming zero MPR, but this assumption yields biased prices and has never been quantified earlier. This thesis deals with the differences between historical and risk neutral behaviors of the non-tradable underlyings and gives insights into the behaviour of the market price of weather risk and weather risk premium. The thesis starts by introducing the risk transfering instruments, the financial - statistical techniques and ends up by examining the real data applications with particular focus on the implied trigger intensity rates of a parametric CAT bond for earthquakes and the MPR of temperature derivatives.

This collection of essays examines the topic of macroeconomic stabilisation in an international context, focusing on monetary policy, capital controls and exchange rates. Chapter 1, written in collaboration with Giancarlo Corsetti and Joao Duarte, reconsiders the effects of common monetary policy shocks across countries in the euro area, using a data-rich factor model and identifying shocks with high-frequency surprises around policy announcements. We show that the degree of heterogeneity in the response to shocks, while being low in financial variables and output, is significant in consumption, consumer prices and macro variables related to the labour and housing markets. Mirroring country-specific institutional and market differences, we find that home ownership rates are significantly correlated with the strength of the housing channel in monetary policy transmission. We document a high dispersion in the response to shocks of house prices and rents and show that, similar to responses in the US, these variables tend to move in different directions. In Chapter 2, I build a two-country, two-good model to examine the welfare effects of capital controls, finding that under certain circumstances, a shut-down in asset trade can be a Pareto improvement. Further, I examine the robustness of the result to parameter changes, explore a wider set of policy instruments and confront computational issues in this class of international macroeconomic models. I document that within an empirically relevant parameter span for the trade elasticity, the gains from capital controls might be significantly larger than suggested by previous contributions. Moreover, I establish that a refined form of capital controls in the shape of taxes and tariffs cannot improve upon the outcome under financial autarky. Finally, results show that the conjunction of pruning methods and endogenous discount factors can remove explosive behaviour from this class of models and restore equilibrating properties. In Chapter 3, I use a panel of 20 emerging market currencies to assess whether a model that combines fundamental and non-fundamental exchange rate forecasting approaches can successfully predict risk premia (i.e. currency excess returns) over the short horizon. In doing so, I aim to overcome three main shortcomings of earlier research: i) Sensitivity to the chosen sample period; ii) seemingly arbitrary selection of explanatory variables that differs from currency to currency; and iii) difficulty in interpreting forecasts beyond the numerical signal. Based on a theoretical model of currency risk premia, I use real exchange rate strength combined with indicators for carry, momentum and economic sentiment to homogeneously forecast risk premia across all 20 currencies in the sample at a monthly frequency. In doing so, the model remains largely agnostic about structural choices, keeping arbitrarily imposed restrictions to a minimum. Results from portfolio construction suggest that returns are significant and robust both across currencies as well as over time, with Sharpe Ratios in out-of-sample tests above 0.7.

This doctoral thesis is a collection of four papers on the analysis of the term structure of interest rates with a focus at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance. "Risk in Macroeconomic Fundamentals and Bond Return Predictability" documents that factors related to risks underlying the macroeconomy such as expectations, uncertainty and downside (upside) macroeconomic risks are able to explain variation in bond risk premia. The information provided is found to be, to a large extent, unrelated to that contained in forward rates and current macroeconomic conditions. "Out-of-sample bond excess returns predictability" provides evidence that macroeconomic variables, risks in macroeconomic outcomes as well as the combination of these different sources of information are able to generate statistical as well as economic bond excess returns predictability in an out-of-sample setting. Results suggest that this finding is not driven by revisions in macroeconomic data. The term spread (yield curve slope) is largely used as an indicator of future economic activity. "Re-examining the predictive power of the yield curve with quantile regression" provides new evidence on the predictive ability of the term spread by studying the whole conditional distribution of GDP growth. "Modeling and forecasting the yield curve by extended Nelson-Siegel class of models: a quantile regression approach" deals with yield curve prediction. More flexible Nelson-Siegel models are found to provide better fitting to the data, even when penalizing for additional model complexity. For the forecasting exercise, quantile-based models are found to overcome all competitors. / <p>Diss. Stockholm :  Stockholm School of Economics, 2014. Introduction together with 4 papers.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to model the dynamics of international term structure of interest rates taking into consideration several dependence channels.Thanks to a new international Treasury yield curve database, we observe that the explained variability decision criterion, suggested by the literature, is not able to select the best combination of factors characterizing the joint dynamics of yield curves. We propose a new methodology based on the maximisation of the likelihood function of a Gaussian state-space model with common and local factors. The associated identification problem is solved in an innovative way. By estimating several sets of countries, we select two global (and three local) factors which are also useful to forecast macroeconomic variables in each considered economy.In addition, our method allows us to detect hidden factors in the international bond returns. They are not visible through a classical principal component analysis of expected bond returns but they are helpful to forecast inflation and industrial production. Keywords: International treasury yield curves, common and local factors, state-space models, EM algorithm, International bond risk premia, principal components.

Cette thèse concerne la modélisation de la dynamique des courbes des taux internationales avec prise en compte de plusieurs canaux de dépendance. A l’aide d’une nouvelle base de données des taux souverains internationaux, nous observons que le critère de la variabilité expliquée, proposé par la littérature, n’est pas capable de sélectionner une meilleure combinaison des facteurs décrivant la dynamique jointe des courbes des taux. Nous proposons une méthode nouvelle de section des facteurs fondée sur la maximisation de vraisemblance d’un modèle espace-état linéaire gaussien avec facteurs communs et locaux. Le problème d’identification associée est résolu d’une façon novatrice. En estimant différents combinaisons de pays, nous sélectionnons des deux facteurs globaux et trois locaux ayant un pouvoir prédictif des variables macro-économiques (activité économique et taux d’inflation) dans chaque économie considérée. Notre méthode nous permet aussi de détecter des facteurs cachés dans les rendements obligataires. Ils ne sont pas visibles à travers une analyse classique en composant principales des rendements obligataires et ils contribuent à la prévision du taux d’inflation et du taux de croissance de la production industrielle. / The aim of this thesis is to model the dynamics of international term structure of interest rates taking into consideration several dependence channels.Thanks to a new international Treasury yield curve database, we observe that the explained variability decision criterion, suggested by the literature, is not able to select the best combination of factors characterizing the joint dynamics of yield curves. We propose a new methodology based on the maximisation of the likelihood function of a Gaussian state-space model with common and local factors. The associated identification problem is solved in an innovative way. By estimating several sets of countries, we select two global (and three local) factors which are also useful to forecast macroeconomic variables in each considered economy.In addition, our method allows us to detect hidden factors in the international bond returns. They are not visible through a classical principal component analysis of expected bond returns but they are helpful to forecast inflation and industrial production. Keywords: International treasury yield curves, common and local factors, state-space models, EM algorithm, International bond risk premia, principal components.

The thesis consists of four chapters. The introductory chapter clarifies different notions of rationality used by economists and gives a summary of the remainder of the thesis. Chapter 2 proposes an explanation for the common empirical observation of the coexistence of infrequently-changing regular price ceilings and promotion-like price patterns. The results derive from enriching an otherwise standard, albeit stylized, general equilibrium model with two elements. First, the consumer-producer interaction is modeled in the spirit of the price dispersion literature, by introducing oligopolistic markets, consumer search costs and heterogeneity. Second, consumers are assumed to be boundedly-rational: In order to incorporate new information about the general price level, they have to incur a small cognitive cost. The decision whether to re-optimize or act according to the obsolete knowledge about prices is itself a result of optimization. It is shown that in this economy, individual retail prices are capped below the monopoly price, but are otherwise flexible. Moreover, they have the following three properties: 1) An individual price has a positive probability of being equal to the ceiling. 2) Prices have a tendency to fall below the ceiling and then be reset back to the cap value. 3) The ceiling remains constant for extended time intervals even when the mean rate of inflation is positive. Properties 1) and 2) can be associated with promotions and properties 1) and 3) imply the emergence of nominal price rigidity. The results do not rely on any type of direct costs of price adjustment. Instead, price stickiness derives from frictions on the consumers’ side of the market, in line with the results of several managerial surveys. It is shown that the developed theory, compared to the classic menu costs-based approach, does better in matching the stylized facts about the reaction of individual prices to inflation. In terms of quantitative assessment, the model, when calibrated to realistic parameter values, produces median price ceiling durations that match values reported in empirical studies.<p><p>The starting point of the essay in Chapter 3 is the observation that the baseline New-Keynesian model, which relies solely on the notion of infrequent price adjustment, cannot account for the observed degree of inflation sluggishness. Therefore, it is a common practice among macro- modelers to introduce an ad hoc additional source of persistence to their models, by assuming that price setters, when adjusting a price of their product, do not set it equal to its unobserved individual optimal level, but instead catch up with the optimal price only gradually. In the paper, a model of incomplete adjustment is built which allows for explicitly testing whether price-setters adjust to the shocks to the unobserved optimal price only gradually and, if so, measure the speed of the catching up process. According to the author, a similar test has not been performed before. It is found that new prices do not generally match their estimated optimal level. However, only in some sectors, e.g. for some industrial goods and services, prices adjust to this level gradually, which should add to the aggregate inflation sluggishness. In other sectors, particularly food, price-setters seem to overreact to shocks, with new prices overshooting the optimal level. These sectors are likely to contribute to decreasing the aggregate inflation sluggishness. Overall, these findings are consistent with the view that price-setters are boundedly-rational. However, they do not provide clear-cut support for the existence of an additional source of inflation persistence due to gradual individual price adjustment. Instead, they suggest that general equilibrium macroeconomic models may need to include at least two types of production sectors, characterized by a contrasting behavior of price-setters. An additional finding stemming from this work is that the idiosyncratic component of the optimal individual price is well approximated by a random walk. This is in line with the assumptions maintained in most of the theoretical literature. <p><p>Chapter 4 of the thesis has been co-authored by Julia Lendvai. In this paper a full-fledged production economy model with Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory features is constructed. The agents’ objective function is assumed to be a weighted sum of the usual utility over consumption and leisure and the utility over relative changes of agents’ wealth. It is also assumed that agents are loss-averse: They are more sensitive to wealth losses than to gains. Apart from the changes in the utility, the model is set-up in a standard Real Business Cycle framework. The authors study prices of stocks and risk-free bonds in this economy. Their work shows that under plausible parameterizations of the objective function, the model is able to explain a wide set of unconditional asset return moments, including the mean return on risk-free bonds, equity premium and the Sharpe Ratio. When the degree of loss aversion in the model is additionally assumed to be state-dependent, the model also produces countercyclical risk premia. This helps it match an array of conditional moments and in particular the predictability pattern of stock returns. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Les stratégies de volatilité ont connu un rapide essor suite à la crise financière de 2008. Or, les récentes performances catastrophiques de ces instruments indiciels ont remis en question leurs contributions en couverture de portefeuille. Mes travaux de thèse visent à repenser, réinventer la philosophie des stratégies de volatilité. Au travers d'une analyse empirique préliminaire reposant sur la théorie de l'utilité espérée, le chapitre 1 dresse le diagnostic des stratégies traditionnelles de volatilité basées sur la couverture de long-terme par la réplication passive de la volatilité implicite. Il montre que, bien que ce type de couverture bat la couverture traditionnelle, elle s'avère inappropriée pour des investisseurs peu averses au risque.Le chapitre 2 ouvre la voie à une nouvelle génération de stratégies de volatilité, actives, optionnelles et basées sur l'investissement factoriel. En effet, notre décomposition analytique et empirique du smile de volatilité implicite en primes de risque implicites, distinctes et investissables permet de monétiser de manière active le portage de risques d'ordres supérieurs. Ces primes de risques mesurent l'écart de valorisation entre les distributions neutres au risque et les distributions physiques.Enfin, le chapitre 3 compare notre approche investissement factoriel avec les stratégies de volatilité employées par les hedge funds. Notre essai montre que nos stratégies de primes de risque d'assurance sont des déterminants importants dans la performance des hedge funds, tant en analyse temporelle que cross-sectionnelle. Ainsi, nous mettons en évidence dans quelle mesure l'alpha provient en réalité de la vente de stratégies d'assurance contre le risque extrême. / Volatility strategies have flourished since the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. Nevertheless, the recent catastrophic performance of such exchange-traded products has put into question their contributions for portfolio hedging and diversification. My thesis work aims to rethink and reinvent the philosophy of volatility strategies.From a preliminary empirical study based on the expected utility theory, Chapter 1 makes a diagnostic of traditional volatility strategies, based on buy-and-hold investments and passive replication of implied volatility. It exhibits that, although such portfolio hedging significantly outperforms traditional hedging, it appears strongly inappropriate for risk-loving investors.Chapter 2 paves the way for a new generation of volatility strategies, active, option-based and factor-based investing. Indeed, our both analytical and empirical decomposition of implied volatility smiles into a combination of implied risk premia, distinct and tradeable, enables to harvest actively the compensation for bearing higher-order risks. These insurance risk premia measure the pricing discrepanciesbetween the risk-neutral and the physical probability distributions.Finally, Chapter 3 compares our factor-based investing approach to the strategies usually employed in the hedge fund universe. Our essay clearly evidences that our tail risk premia strategies are incremental determinants in the hedge fund performance, in both the time-series and the cross-section of returns. Hence, we exhibit to what extent hedge fund alpha actually arises from selling crash insurance strategies against tail risks.