(Translated by https://www.hiragana.jp/)
The sovereignty option: the Quebec referendum and market views on the Canadian dollar
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgif/555.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The sovereignty option: the Quebec referendum and market views on the Canadian dollar

Author

Listed:
  • Michael P. Leahy
  • Charles P. Thomas

Abstract

We use exchange traded options on Canadian dollar futures to estimate the market's risk-neutral distribution for the Canadian dollar in the days before and after the Quebec sovereignty referendum. We employ a relatively new technique that places little a priori structure on the estimated distribution. This lack of structure allows the estimated distribution to reflect the multi-modal nature of expectations associated with the referendum's results. The technique is especially suited to circumstances in which a particular event will reduce a large degree of uncertainty prior to the expiration date of the options. Our estimated distributions are consistent with a significant perceived probability that the Canadian dollar would move up or down by as much as 5 percent as a result of the vote.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael P. Leahy & Charles P. Thomas, 1996. "The sovereignty option: the Quebec referendum and market views on the Canadian dollar," International Finance Discussion Papers 555, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:555
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1996/555/default.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/1996/555/ifdp555.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William R. Melick & Charles P. Thomas, 1996. "Using options prices to infer PDF'S for asset prices: an application to oil prices during the Gulf crisis," International Finance Discussion Papers 541, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Breeden, Douglas T & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1978. "Prices of State-contingent Claims Implicit in Option Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 621-651, October.
    3. Bates, D.S., 1990. "The Crash Of '87: Was It Expected? The Evidence From Options Markets," Weiss Center Working Papers 28-90, Wharton School - Weiss Center for International Financial Research.
    4. Mark Rubinstein., 1994. "Implied Binomial Trees," Research Program in Finance Working Papers RPF-232, University of California at Berkeley.
    5. Neuhaus, Holger, 1995. "The information content of derivatives for monetary policy: Implied volatilities and probabilities," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1995,03e, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    6. David S. Bates, "undated". "The Crash of '87: Was it Expected? The Evidence from Options Markets," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 28-90, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    7. Yacine Aït-Sahalia & Andrew W. Lo, "undated". "Nonparametric Estimation of State-Price Densities Implicit in Financial Asset Prices," CRSP working papers 332, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    8. Cox, John C. & Ross, Stephen A., 1976. "The valuation of options for alternative stochastic processes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 145-166.
    9. Allan M. Malz, 1995. "Using option prices to estimate realignment probabilities in the European Monetary System," Staff Reports 5, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    10. Barone-Adesi, Giovanni & Whaley, Robert E, 1987. "Efficient Analytic Approximation of American Option Values," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(2), pages 301-320, June.
    11. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    12. Rubinstein, Mark, 1994. "Implied Binomial Trees," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 771-818, July.
    13. William R. Melick & Charles P. Thomas, 1992. "War and peace: recovering the market's probability distribution of crude oil futures prices during the Gulf crisis," International Finance Discussion Papers 437, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. Black, Fischer, 1976. "The pricing of commodity contracts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 167-179.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bondarenko, Oleg, 2003. "Estimation of risk-neutral densities using positive convolution approximation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1-2), pages 85-112.
    2. Carvalho, Augusto & Guimaraes, Bernardo, 2018. "State-controlled companies and political risk: Evidence from the 2014 Brazilian election," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 66-78.
    3. René Lalonde, 1999. "The Information Content of Interest Rate Futures Options," Staff Working Papers 99-15, Bank of Canada.
    4. Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris & Chang, Bo Young, 2013. "Forecasting with Option-Implied Information," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 581-656, Elsevier.
    5. Robert R Bliss & Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, 2000. "Testing the stability of implied probability density functions," Bank of England working papers 114, Bank of England.
    6. Martin Mandler, 2002. "Extracting Market Expectations from Option Prices: Two Case Studies in Market Perceptions of the ECB's Monetary Policy 1999/2000," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 138(II), pages 165-189, June.
    7. Rogers, J. M. & Siklos, P. L., 2003. "Foreign exchange market intervention in two small open economies: the Canadian and Australian experience," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 393-416, June.
    8. Kostakis, Alexandros & Mu, Liangyi & Otsubo, Yoichi, 2023. "Detecting political event risk in the option market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    9. Campa, Jose M. & Chang, P. H. Kevin & Reider, Robert L., 1998. "Implied exchange rate distributions: evidence from OTC option markets1," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 117-160, February.
    10. Bliss, Robert R. & Panigirtzoglou, Nikolaos, 2002. "Testing the stability of implied probability density functions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2-3), pages 381-422, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhupinder Bahra, 1997. "Implied risk-neutral probability density functions from option prices: theory and application," Bank of England working papers 66, Bank of England.
    2. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    3. Jondeau, Eric & Rockinger, Michael, 2000. "Reading the smile: the message conveyed by methods which infer risk neutral densities," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 885-915, December.
    4. Marie Briere, 2006. "Market Reactions to Central Bank Communication Policies :Reading Interest Rate Options Smiles," Working Papers CEB 38, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Coutant, Sophie & Jondeau, Eric & Rockinger, Michael, 2001. "Reading PIBOR futures options smiles: The 1997 snap election," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(11), pages 1957-1987, November.
    6. Jondeau, E. & Rockinger, M., 1998. "Reading the Smile: The Message Conveyed by Methods Which Infer Risk Neutral," Working papers 47, Banque de France.
    7. Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris & Chang, Bo Young, 2013. "Forecasting with Option-Implied Information," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 581-656, Elsevier.
    8. Neuhaus, Holger, 1995. "Der Informationsgehalt von Derivaten für die Geldpolitik: Implizite Volatilitäten und Wahrscheinlichkeiten," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1995,03, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    9. Alonso, Francisco & Blanco, Roberto & Rubio Irigoyen, Gonzalo, 2005. "Testing the Forecasting Performance of Ibex 35 Option-implied Risk-neutral Densities," DFAEII Working Papers 1988-088X, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    10. William R. Melick & Charles P. Thomas, 1992. "War and peace: recovering the market's probability distribution of crude oil futures prices during the Gulf crisis," International Finance Discussion Papers 437, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Neuhaus, Holger, 1995. "The information content of derivatives for monetary policy: Implied volatilities and probabilities," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1995,03e, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    12. Mondher Bellalah, 2009. "Derivatives, Risk Management & Value," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 7175, September.
    13. Carl Chiarella & Xue-Zhong He & Christina Sklibosios Nikitopoulos, 2015. "Derivative Security Pricing," Dynamic Modeling and Econometrics in Economics and Finance, Springer, edition 127, number 978-3-662-45906-5, March.
    14. Robert Tompkins, 2001. "Implied volatility surfaces: uncovering regularities for options on financial futures," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(3), pages 198-230.
    15. René Garcia & Richard Luger & Eric Renault, 2000. "Asymmetric Smiles, Leverage Effects and Structural Parameters," Working Papers 2000-57, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    16. Monteiro, Ana Margarida & Tutuncu, Reha H. & Vicente, Luis N., 2008. "Recovering risk-neutral probability density functions from options prices using cubic splines and ensuring nonnegativity," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 187(2), pages 525-542, June.
    17. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51.
    18. Joe Akira Yoshino, 2003. "Market Risk and Volatility in the Brazilian Stock Market," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 6, pages 385-403, November.
    19. Robert R Bliss & Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, 2000. "Testing the stability of implied probability density functions," Bank of England working papers 114, Bank of England.
    20. Jin Zhang & Yi Xiang, 2008. "The implied volatility smirk," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 263-284.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Canada; Money;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedgif:555. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.