求一篇西方经济学论文针对现有社会现象,求一篇有关西方经济学的论文.两千字以内,

求一篇西方经济学论文
针对现有社会现象,求一篇有关西方经济学的论文.两千字以内,

Dollar bounce threatens everything else
Since early last year, there has been "a rock-solid relationship" between the dollar and risk appetite, says Jennifer Hughes in the Financial Times. Good news would fuel appetite for risk, weakening the dollar as investors sold safe US holdings to scoop up assets such as stocks or commodities. Bad news has prompted the sale of those assets and investors to seek a safe haven in dollars. The inverse correlation between US stocks and the dollar has been above 90% over the past six months (a 100% correlation would imply that the two trends were in lock-step).
Last Friday there was talk that the link might be ending. US employment figures were much better than expected: 11,000 jobs were lost in November, and the jobless rate fell from 10.2% to 10%. The dollar jumped by almost two cents against the euro, as markets brought forward the date they expect an interest rate rise, reversing the trend of falling on good news. If the Federal Reserve does raise rates, it may "dramatically alter the way the US dollar behaves", says M&G's Michael Riddell on Bondvigilantes.co.uk. Between early 2004, when the market began to price in a series of Fed rate hikes, and late 2005, the dollar gained almost 12% against the yen and 7% against sterling and 4% against the euro, at a time when stocks were also climbing.
However, on Monday, expectations of rising rates were tempered by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, who said it was too soon to herald a sustainable recovery. And the risk/dollar relationship stayed intact early this week. A strengthening dollar hit commodities – gold has lost 5% from last week's peak. Equities fell too, as global jitters on Tuesday prompted investors to seek out a safe haven in dollars. The key to breaking the correlation is to see "consistently improving data" which would shift rate expectations, as Vassili Serebriakov of Wells Fargo points out. But beyond the payroll data, which may well be a one-off, recent releases have been lacklustre. So it's too early to expect the relationship to end.

The underlying reason for the correlation is the carry trade. Since March, investors have been borrowing in dollars at rock-bottom interest rates and investing the money in higher-yielding, riskier assets overseas. It's hard to put an exact figure on the carry trade's impact. But the fact that negative correlations between the dollar and a range of risky asset classes have risen sharply over the past few months suggests that "all assets are driven by the giant dollar carry trade", says Dean Curnutt of Macro Risk Advisors. Short positions in the dollar are also close to historical extremes, which also points to the influence of the carry trade.
The danger is that a rise in the dollar will trigger a "stampede" as investors rush to cover their short positions by selling risky investments. Cue a sharp, self-reinforcing rise in the dollar and a "co-ordinated collapse" of risky asset classes, as Nouriel Roubini of New York University points out. In short, the dollar carry trade has become a "huge" bubble. And one factor that could drive the rebound in the dollar is the return of the ongoing credit crunch to the spotlight. The latest concern is sovereign debt. But on top of that, the IMF reckons that banks have probably barely written off half their losses, while the global recovery is fragile. So there is ample scope for new shocks. "I would be extremely surprised if we do not see a serious hiccup," says Philippe Gijsels of Fortis Global Markets. Morever, the US trade deficit is improving rapidly, while the greenback is cheap relative to its long-term trade-weighted average. "The worst days" for the dollar look over, says Capital Economics. But that's bad news for most other investments.
The big picture: coffee prices will perk up

A rally is brewing in Arabica coffee (the type which accounts for 65%-70% of global consumption), says Maja Wallengren in Barron's. The International Coffee Organisation notes that demand is growing at 1.5%-2% a year. But thanks to poor harvests in Brazil and Colombia, it expects a supply deficit of seven to nine million bags (60kg) in the year that began in October 2009, compared to a two-million-bag deficit the year before. Meanwhile, stocks have fallen fast and now cover less than two weeks' demand from importers. Expect prices to keep climbing in the next few months, says Eugen Weinberg of Commerzbank.
Statistic of the week
Britain looks on track to drop out of the world's top ten economies by 2015, according to the Centre for Economic and Business Research. Over the past four years we have slipped from fourth to seventh, with China and France overtaking us. Strong economic and population growth, rising exchange rates and growing demand for natural resources mean Brazil, Russia and even Canada are set to eclipse us now.
WHEN pundits worry about the distorting effects of cheap money on asset prices, they invariably single out the carry trade as a cause for concern. The term is often used loosely to describe any investment that looks suspiciously profitable. More specifically it refers to a particular sort of foreign-exchange trading: that of borrowing cheaply in a “funding” currency to exploit high interest rates in a “target” currency. The yen has long been a favoured funding currency for the carry trade because of Japan’s permanently low interest rates. As a result of the crisis and near-zero rates in America, the dollar has become one, too.
If markets were truly efficient, carry trades ought not to be profitable because the extra interest earned should be exactly offset by a fall in the target currency. That is why high-interest currencies trade at a discount to their current or “spot” rate in forward markets. If exchange rates today were the same as those in forward contracts, there would be an opportunity for riskless profit. Arbitrageurs could buy the high-interest currency today, lock in a future sale at the same price and pocket the extra interest from holding the currency until the forward contract is settled.
In practice, the forward market is a poor forecaster. Most of the time exchange rates do not adjust to offset the extra yield being targeted in carry trades. So a simple strategy of buying high-yielding currencies against low-yielding ones can be rewarding for those that pursue it. The profits are volatile, however, and carry trades are prone to infrequent but huge losses. In late 2008 the yen rose by 60% in just two months against the high-yielding Australian dollar, a popular target for carry traders. That made it much more expensive to pay back yen-denominated debt.
If efficient-market theory cannot kill the carry trade, why don’t volatile returns, and the occasional massive loss, scare off investors? A new paper* by Òscar Jordà and Alan Taylor of the University of California, Davis, may have the answer. They find that a refined carry-trade strategy—one that incorporates a measure of long-term value—produces more consistent profits and is less prone to huge losses than one that targets the highest yield.
The authors first examine returns to a simple carry trade for a set of ten rich-country currencies between 1986 and 2008. Buying the highest yielder of any currency pair produced an average return of 26 basis points (hundredths of a percentage point) per month. That would be fine, except that the standard deviation of returns, a gauge of how variable profits are, was almost 300 basis points. The monthly Sharpe ratio that measures returns against risk was a “truly awful” 0.1 (the higher the ratio, the better the risk-adjusted performance). Worse still, the distribution of monthly profits was negatively skewed: big losses were more likely to occur than windfall gains.