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In complete financial markets, given a particular market variable, which could be finite dimensional (e.g., a price vector of a collection of stocks) or infinite dimensional (e.g., a price trajectory of some security over some period of time), the unique optimal strategy of consumption and investment in European claims contingent on that variable is obtained from two kinds of preference structure. Several examples are given to illustrate the optimality of the strategy. Results obtained in this paper are an extension of Jankunas [4].

National and international investors are exposed to risk, stemming from volatile asset prices and inflation uncertainty. However investors can enter futures markets to hedge against these risks. The paper develops a dynamic hedging model, where the evolution of asset price, price level and futures price and hence real wealth is stochastic. For a risk averse investor, optimal dynamic consumption and hedging strategy are derived and discussed.

Various empirical studies have been conducted. However, these studies fail to examine the asymmetric effect of income and price across different quantiles of consumption in the emerging 7 countries. This study extends the existing literature using a novel approach called the quantile ARDL model along with the standard nonlinear ARDL model. Findings based on the nonlinear ARDL model indicate that positive shocks in income positively and significantly affect consumption in the short- and long-run. On the other hand, negative shocks in income do not significantly affect consumption which, therefore, suggests an asymmetric effect of income on consumption. In addition, the quantile ARDL estimates indicate that income positively affects consumption across all quantiles of the consumption except the 95th quantile. Moreover, the quantile ARDL estimates indicate that price variations negatively affect consumption across all emerging 7 countries. These estimates suggest that devising policies without considering the asymmetric effect may lead to unfavorable consequences.

This paper computes the welfare gains from optimal hedging with futures contracts for an oil-exporting country. Unlike previous studies, this paper derives the welfare gains under a more realistic futures hedging model. This is accomplished by considering basis risk and by relaxing the full-hedging assumption. Furthermore, this is the first paper to derive the welfare gains under optimal hedging strategies. We also incorporate the empirical relationship between spot and futures prices within our models, rather than the theoretical relationship which most studies employ. The models were developed under a dynamic stochastic optimization framework and the optimal consumption and value functions were found using the method of Endogenous Gridpoints. The results showed that the choice of the optimal hedging strategy employed led to a slight improvement in the country’s welfare gains relative to full hedging. We also found that the strategies with the highest welfare gains were the most effective at volatility reduction. Finally, this paper provides compelling evidence for the use of optimal macro futures hedging as an effective risk management tool for oil-exporting developing countries.

It is suitable to think of the theoretic aspects of finance as financial economics. In this regard, main areas of finance have had strong linkages to economics, including microeconomics, where the foundations of optimal consumer and investor choices are laid. Many of the economics giants in the late 1800s and well into the last century laboured on mathematical results prescribing optimal consumption and investment choices building on fundamental axioms of rationality and non-satiability in human wants. One key construction is that of a utility function of consumption. A more positive utility number to a bundle of consumption goods than another bundle is simply another expression for preference by the individual of the former bundle compared to the latter. A celebrated study by mathematicians Von Neumann and Morgenstern produces the useful result that when probability estimates are introduced into consumption outcomes or utilities, then an individual will prefer a risky gamble to another provided the expected utility of the former is larger. Therefore, we can perform optimisation on a set of gambles or choices based on expected outcomes of utility functions of consumption goods…