We offer the first examination of whether the gold forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the future gold spot rate. We find strong evidence that it is not, particularly at longer maturities. Building on Aggarwal and Zong's (2008) approach to allow for investor risk aversion, we then examine...

Gold is traded worldwide, mainly in London, New York, Tokyo and Shanghai. We apply the recently developed spillover index approach of Diebold and Yilmaz (2009) to investigate the degree to which these markets are integrated, and which are net senders or recipients of information. The evidence...

We assess whether two classes of bubbles occur in the spot price of gold, rational speculative and periodically bursting bubbles, using gold's' lease rates for the first time in the literature as a measures of its fundamental value. This question is of particular significance as these are the...

We investigate the information shares of the two main centers of gold trading, over a 25 year period, using non overlapping 4 month windows. We find that neither London nor New York are dominant in terms of price information share, that the dominant market switches from time to time and that...

We examine by means of a survey and subsequent statistical analysis the extent of financial risk tolerance in Irish adults. We administer the (J. Grable & Lytton, 1999) 13 item risk tolerance instrument, and find confirmed a number of stylized facts found elsewhere on age, gender and education...

We present a review of the Irish banking collapse, detailing its origins in a confluence of events. We suggest that the very concentrated nature of the Irish banking sector, which will emerge from the policy decisions taken as a consequence of the collapse, runs a risk of a second crisis. We...

The minimum spanning tree concept from physics is used to study the process of market integration for a large group of national stock market indices. We show how the tree grows over time and describe the dynamics of its various characteristics. Over the period studied, 1997-2006, the tree shows...

This paper examines short-term and long-term comovements between developed European Union (EU) stock markets and those of three Central European (CE) countries which recently joined the EU. Dynamic cointegration and principal components methods are applied, in addition to static tests. While we...

This paper studies capital market integration in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries and its implications for international portfolio investment allocation. Starting with four cointegration methodologies, we significantly reject the hypothesis of a stable, long-run bivariate...

This study re-examines the results of Ciner (2001), who claims that the historically stable relationship between gold and silver has broken down in the 1990s. It is shown, using a longer run of data, for both cash and futures, that this finding may be unwarranted. In particular a recursive...