TPP and Trans-Pacific Perplexities

In the past few years, the United States has been busy negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement with countries in the Asia-Pacific region. These countries include Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Although it remains unclear which chapters or provisions will be included in the final text of the TPP Agreement, the negotiations have been quite controversial. In addition to the usual concerns about having high standards that are heavily lobbied by industries and arguably inappropriate for many participating countries, the TPP negotiations have been heavily criticized for their secrecy and lack of transparency, accountability and democratic participation. Written for the inaugural annual Asia-Pacific issue of the Fordham International Law Journal, this article does not seek to continue this line of criticism, although transparency, accountability and democratic participation remain highly important. Nor does the article aim to explore the agreement\u27s implications for each specific trade sector. Instead, this Article focuses on the ramifications of the exclusion of four different parties or groups of parties from the TPP negotiations: (1) China; (2) BRICS and other emerging economies; (3) Europe; and (4) civil society organizations. Targeting these TPP outsiders and using illustrations from the intellectual property sector and the larger trade context, this article seeks to highlight the perplexities created by the TPP negotiations. It cautions policymakers, commentators and the public at large against the negotiations\u27 considerable and largely overlooked costs

The Harmonization Game: What Basketball Can Teach About Intellectual Property and International Trade

In the recent World Men\u27s Basketball Championships in Indianapolis, Team USA found out painfully that the international game is very different from what they play at home and that the gap between USA Basketball and the rest of the world has been closing. While the United States\u27 losses might have a significant impact on how the country will prepare for the 2004 Olympics in Athens and on how Americans train youngsters to play basketball, their teachings go beyond basketball. The international harmonization process is a game with different rules, different officials, and players with different visions and mindsets. By watching how players interact with rules, officials, and other players, one therefore could gain insight into globalization and the international harmonization process. Team USA\u27s recent loss might be a painful lesson to Americans, but it provides a beneficial lesson to all of us who are involved in intellectual property and international trade

Simulation-based Estimation of Contingent-claims Prices

A new methodology is proposed to estimate theoretical prices of financial contingent-claims whose values are dependent on some other underlying financial assets. In the literature the preferred choice of estimator is usually maximum likelihood (ML). ML has strong asymptotic justification but is not necessarily the best method in finite samples. The present paper proposes instead a simulation-based method that improves the finite sample performance of the ML estimator while maintaining its good asymptotic properties. The methods are implemented and evaluated here in the Black-Scholes option pricing model and in the Vasicek bond pricing model, but have wider applicability. Monte Carlo studies show that the proposed procedures achieve bias reductions over ML estimation in pricing contingent claims. The bias reductions are sometimes accompanied by reductions in variance, leading to significant overall gains in mean squared estimation error. Empirical applications to US treasury bills highlight the differences between the bond prices implied by the simulation-based approach and those delivered by ML. Some consequences for the statistical testing of contingent-claim pricing models are discussed.Bias reduction, Bond pricing, Indirect inference, Option pricing, Simulation-based estimation

A Conversation with Eric Ghysels

Published in Econometric Theory, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1017/S026646661100017X</p

The power of data in Aboriginal hands

This paper explores the critical role that data can play in development scenarios when Aboriginal people are in control of collecting, managing and interpreting data. It was first presented as a pleniary paper at the conference Social Science Perspectives on the 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, held at The ANU on 11–12 April 2011. At the time of writing, Peter Yu was Chief Executive Officer, Nyamba Buru Yawuru Ltd, Broome and a member of the Australian Statistics Advisory Council of the Australian Bureau of Statistics

A Two-Stage Realized Volatility Approach to the Estimation for Diffusion Processes from Discrete Observations

This paper motivates and introduces a two-stage method for estimating diffusion processes based on discretely sampled observations. In the first stage we make use of the feasible central limit theory for realized volatility, as recently developed in Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2002), to provide a regression model for estimating the parameters in the diffusion function. In the second stage the in-fill likelihood function is derived by means of the Girsanov theorem and then used to estimate the parameters in the drift function. Consistency and asymptotic distribution theory for these estimates are established in various contexts. The finite sample performance of the proposed method is compared with that of the approximate maximum likelihood method of Ait-Sahalia (2002).Maximum likelihood, Girsnov theorem, Discrete sampling, Continuous record, Realized volatility