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Previous studies of the quality of market-forecasted volatility have used the volatility that is implied by exchange-traded option prices. The use of implied volatility in estimating the market view of future volatility has suffered from variable measurement errors, such as the non-synchronization of option and underlying asset prices, the expiration-day effect, and the The authors thank Yong Cher for his research assistance, and Louis Ederington, Michael Melvin, Lilian Ng, Gunter Dufey, Robin Grieves, Phillipe Chen, the participants at the CREFS workshop at the Nanyang Business School, and those at the 2001 FMA Annual Meeting in Toronto for their helpful comments. The authors also thank the Journal of Futures Markets editor, Robert I. Webb, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Support for this project was provided by the CREFS at the Nanyang Business School. Campa and Chang (1995) also employed quoted implied volatility in their study. However, their objective differed from this study in that they investigated whether forward quoted implied volatility had any predictive power for future quoted implied volatility. Their data was supplied by a major commercial bank. The data that is employed in this study was obtained from Bloomberg, which collected them from major quoting banks. volatility smile effect. This study circumvents these problems by using the quoted implied volatility from the over-the-counter (OTC) currency option market, in which traders quote prices in terms of volatility. Furthermore, the OTC currency options have daily quotes for standard maturities, which allows the study to look at the market's ability to forecast future volatility for different horizons. The study finds that quoted implied volatility subsumes the information content of historically based forecasts at shorter horizons, and the former is as good as the latter at longer horizons. These results are consistent with the argument that measurement errors have a substantial effect on the implied volatility estimator and the quality of the inferences that are based on it.

This study employs a non-parametric approach to investigate the volatility risk premium in the over-the-counter currency option market. Using a large database of daily delta-neutral straddle quotes in four major currencies—the British pound, the euro, the Japanese yen, and the Swiss franc—we find that volatility risk is priced in all four currencies across different option maturities. We find that the volatility risk premium is negative, with the premium decreasing in maturity. Finally, we also find evidence that jump risk may be priced in the currency option market.

The Singapore Exchange (SGX), a small satellite market, successfully competes with a large home market, the Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE), in trading the Nikkei 225 futures index. In this paper, we investigate the contribution of the SGX to price discovery and shed light on the reasons for its continued success. Evidence is provided from information revelation and price discovery of three competing but informationally linked markets of the Nikkei 225 index—domestic spot (Tokyo Stock Exchange), domestic futures (OSE), and foreign futures (SGX), which represents the satellite market. Overall, the futures market contributes 77% to price discovery, with the satellite market contributing 42% of the futures and 33% of the total price discovery. These figures, surprisingly, far exceed the satellite market's share of trading volume. Support is provided for the extended trading hours on the SGX for three of the four non‐overlapping trading sub‐periods. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:981–1004, 2004

to compare the predictive power of the implied volatility derived from currency option prices that are traded on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and over-the-counter market (OTC). Among the competing implied volatility forecasts, OTC-implied volatility subsumes the information content of PHLX-and CME-implied volatility. Consistent with extant studies our result also shows that the implied volatility provides more information about future volatility-regardless of whether it is from the OTC, PHLX, or CME markets-than time series based volatility.

This study examines the role of financial analysts in equity valuation in Japan by comparing the relevance of financial analysts' earnings forecasts, over financial statement information, to investors' decisions. We find that the value-relevance of a set of accounting variables is very modest, but the incremental contribution of analysts' forecasts is very significant. This is in line with the expectation that the skill and expertise of analysts are more valuable in markets with poor financial disclosure, such as Japan. We also find that the importance of the financial statements increases over time while the importance of the analysts' forecasts does not change. We also provide evidence of the effect of Japanese corporate groupings, keiretsu, on the informativeness of accounting signals and earnings forecasts. The results show that the contribution of accounting variables to valuation is lower for keiretsu firms, which supports the exclusionary hypothesis that companies which are a part of keiretsu, disclose less information than do non-keiretsu companies. The analysts' forecasts are equally important for investors in both types of firms. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2005.

Pricing in the Euroyen market is based on LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate, set at 11am London time or TIBOR, the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate, set at 11am Tokyo time. Since the TIBOR panel is dominated by Tokyo city banks while the LIBOR panel is dominated by non-Japanese banks, the changing TIBOR-LIBOR spread reflects the credit risk associated with Japanese banks or the "Japan premium." In this paper, we investigate the determinants of this "Japan premium." The spread is modeled as a function of determinants of bank default and firm value suggested by a theory of credit spreads. Our results suggest that systematic variation in the spread can be explained by interest rate and stock price effects along with public information flows of good and bad news regarding Japanese banking, with a separate individual role for Japanese bank credit downgrades and upgrades. Comments on an earlier draft were received from an anonymous referee, Vidhan Goyal, and Lilian Ng. We are responsible for any remaining errors.