Money Banking and Financial Markets 4Th Edition Cecchetti Solutions Manua Full Chapter PDF
Money Banking and Financial Markets 4Th Edition Cecchetti Solutions Manua Full Chapter PDF
Money Banking and Financial Markets 4Th Edition Cecchetti Solutions Manua Full Chapter PDF
Chapter 5
Understanding Risk
Answer:
a.
Possibilities Probability Outcome
1 1/27 0 heads, 3 tails
5-1
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
d.
Possibilities Probability Outcome Payoff
1 1/27 3 tails $0
2 2/27 Tails, heads, tails $100
3 2/27 Tails, tails, heads $0
4 2/27 Heads, tails, tails $0
5 4/9 2 heads, 1 tails $200
6 8/27 3 heads, 0 tails $300
A person who is risk-averse will want to pay less than $185; a person who is risk-
neutral will be willing to pay $185.
3. You are the founder of IGRO, an Internet firm that delivers groceries. (LO3, LO4)
a. Give an example of an idiosyncratic risk and a systematic risk your company
faces.
b. As founder of the company, you own a significant portion of the firm, and
your personal wealth is highly concentrated in IGRO shares. What are the
risks that you face, and how should you try to reduce them?
Answer:
5-2
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
a. An idiosyncratic risk is that someone could create another Internet firm to deliver
groceries, which would reduce IGRO’s share of the market. A systematic risk could
be that people lose trust in the security of online transactions, in which case all firms
offering purchases via the Internet would suffer. An example of a more widespread
systematic risk is that the entire economy does poorly; if people’s incomes fall, they
tend to buy less of most things, including groceries from IGRO (people’s overall food
consumption would not be greatly affected, but they may return to buying groceries
from a supermarket instead of online to save on delivery costs).
b. You could suffer large losses if IGRO does poorly; your stock holdings could
greatly decrease in value, and you could lose your job. You should try to diversify
and invest in assets whose returns are not correlated with returns on IGRO stock.
4. Assume that the economy can experience high growth, normal growth, or recession.
Under these conditions, you expect the following stock market returns for the coming
year: (LO1, LO2)
5. Using the information from the table in Problem 4, in dollar terms what is the value at
risk associated with the $1,000 investment? (LO2)
Answer: Since the worst outcome is a loss of 15 percent, the value at risk is $150.
5-3
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
6. Car insurance companies sell a large number of policies. Explain how this practice
minimizes their risk. (LO4)
Answer: Individual automobile accidents are uncorrelated in the sense that one person
having an accident doesn’t have any effect on whether someone else will have one.
By selling lots of insurance policies, the company is reducing risk by spreading it.
Put another way, if each individual has a 1% chance of having an automobile accident
each year, then on average one out of each 100 policyholders will make a claim in a
given year. If the company sells 1,000,000 policies, then it can be reasonably sure
they will face 10,000 claims.
8. Banks pay substantial amounts to monitor the risks that they take. One of the primary
concerns of a bank’s “risk managers” is to compute the value at risk. Why is value at
risk so important for a bank (or any financial institution)? (LO2)
Answer: The first concern of a bank’s management is to stay open. This means
making sure that the risk of bankruptcy remains very small. That means focusing on
the worst case, which is what value at risk does.
9. Explain how liquidity problems can be an important source of systemic risk in the
financial system. (LO3)
Answer: Lack of liquidity can make it difficult or impossible for certain firms to
meet their obligations to other firms in the system. For example, if one firm cannot
convert some assets to cash due to market liquidity problems, or if it cannot borrow
due to funding liquidity problems, it may not be able to deliver on an obligation to
another firm. This, in turn, may compromise the second firm’s ability to meet its
obligations and so on, leading to system-wide problems.
10. *Give an example of systematic risk for the U.S. economy and how you might reduce
your exposure to such a risk. (LO3)
Answer: A recession is one kind of systematic risk facing the U.S. economy. You
could diversify your investments internationally. You could hedge against a U.S.-
specific risk by investing in a country whose fortunes move in the opposite direction
5-4
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
to those of the United States. Alternatively, you could reduce your risk by spreading
your portfolio across a broad range of countries whose fortunes are independent of
each other.
11. For each of the following events, explain whether it represents systematic risk or
idiosyncratic risk and explain why. (LO3)
a. Your favorite restaurant is closed by the county health department.
b. The government of Spain defaults on its bonds, causing the breakup of the euro
area.
c. Freezing weather in Florida destroys the orange crop.
d. Solar flares destroy earth-orbiting communications satellites, knocking out
cellphone service worldwide.
Answer:
a. This is idiosyncratic risk since it is unique to this particular establishment.
b. This is a systematic risk that affects entire economies within the euro area and
beyond.
c. This is idiosyncratic risk as only one of several orange-growing areas in the
country is affected. For example, orange groves in California are not damaged by
the Florida freeze.
d. This is systematic risk as communications around the globe are disrupted, perhaps
until new satellites can be constructed and put into orbit.
12. You are planning for retirement and must decide whether to purchase only your
employer’s stock for your 401(k) or, instead, to buy a mutual fund that holds shares in
the 500 largest companies in the world. From the perspective of both idiosyncratic
and systematic risk, explain how you would make your decision. (LO3)
Answer: From both perspectives, you should purchase the more highly diversified
portfolio containing the 500 large companies. If you own only your company’s stock,
your retirement savings could be permanently lowered by an idiosyncratic risk to the
firm. If you hold the diversified portfolio, even if your employer is one of the 500
companies in the mutual fund, only a small portion of your savings is affected. In the
event of systematic risk, the percentage decline in the price of your employer’s stock
may be similar to that of the broad portfolio since all companies face the same
challenge. In neither case would you expect to be worse off holding the mutual fund,
but you would be better protected against idiosyncratic risk.
13. For each of the following actions, identify whether the method of risk assessment
motivating your action is due to the value at risk or the standard deviation of an
underlying probability distribution. (LO2)
a. You buy life insurance.
b. You hire an investment advisor who specializes in international diversification in
stock portfolios.
c. In your role as a central banker you provide emergency loans to illiquid
intermediaries.
5-5
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
d. You open a kiosk at the mall selling ice cream and hot chocolate.
Answer:
a. Life insurance only pays off when you die and your heirs are left without your
regular paycheck, presumably the worst outcome. So this is an example of a value
at risk assessment.
b. You are taking steps to reduce idiosyncratic risk in a portfolio, attempting to
minimize the variability of the portfolio’s value for a given expected return. It is
an example of using the underlying probability distribution as the basis for the
decision.
c. Emergency loans to support the financial system are an attempt to avoid the worst
outcome, and can be motivated by a value at risk assessment.
d. You are trying to smooth out the earnings of the business across seasons. This is
an example of using the seasonal probability distributions for both ice cream and
hot chocolate sales to lower idiosyncratic risk.
14. Which of the following investments in the following table would be most attractive to
a risk-averse investor? How would your answer differ if the investor were described as
risk-neutral? (LO1)
Investment Expected Value Standard Deviation
A 75 10
B 100 10
C 100 20
Answer: A risk-averse investor requires a higher return for taking on more risk. This
investor will also prefer an investment with a higher expected value given a certain
level of risk. Therefore, a risk-averse investor will prefer Investment B, as it yields a
higher expected value than Investment A and the same expected value as Investment
C for a lower level of risk, as measured by the standard deviation. A risk-neutral
investor is concerned only with the expected return of the investment and so would be
indifferent between Investments B and C.
15. Consider an investment that pays off $800 or $1,400 per $1,000 invested with equal
probability. Suppose you have $1,000 but are willing to borrow to increase your
expected return. What would happen to the expected value and standard deviation of
the investment if you borrowed an additional $1,000 and invested a total of $2,000?
What if you borrowed $2,000 to invest a total of $3,000? (LO1, LO2)
Answer: If you just invest your own $1,000, the expected value = 0.5(800) +
0.5(1,400) = 1,100 or 10% and the standard deviation = 300.
5-6
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
If you borrowed $2,000 to invest a total of $3,000, the expected value = 0.5(2,400-
2,000) + 0.5(4,200-2,000) = 1,300 or 30%. You have tripled the expected return
versus the un-leveraged investment. The standard deviation =
√0.5(400 − 1,300)2 + 0.5(2,200 − 1,300)2 = 900. The standard deviation has
tripled versus the un-leveraged investment.
In the first case, the owner’s contribution to the purchase is $1 for each $1 invested,
so the leverage ratio is 1.
In the second case, you contribute half of the cost of the total investment, so the
leverage ratio is 1/0.5 = 2 – or $2,000/1,000 = 2. The expected value and standard
deviation are increased by a factor of 2- or doubled.
In the third case, you contribute one third of the cost of the total investment, so the
leverage ratio is 1/0.3333 = 3.The expected value and standard deviation are tripled.
16. Looking again at the investment described in question 15, what is the maximum
leverage ratio you could have and still have enough to repay the loan in the event the
bad outcome occurred? (LO1, LO2)
Answer: The bad outcome pays off $800 per $1000 invested, so you lose $200 per
$1000 invested. Therefore, the maximum leverage ratio you could have is 5.
Borrowing $4000 would give a total investment of $5000. In the event of the bad
outcome, the payoff would be 800*5 - $4000 – just enough to repay the loan. You
would lose all of your own $1000.
17. Consider two possible investments whose payoffs are completely independent of one
another. Both investments have the same expected value and standard deviation. If
you have $1,000 to invest, could you benefit from dividing your funds between these
investments? Explain your answer. (LO4)
Answer: Yes. Even though the investments have the same standard deviation, by
spreading your $1000 across both of them, you reduce your risk. Intuitively, you are
adding combinations of possible payoffs that lie between the worst- and best-case
scenarios and so the probability-weighted spread of the possible payoffs is smaller.
Mathematically, the variance of the payoffs is halved.
18. *Suppose, as in Problem 17, that there were ten independent investments available
rather than just two. Would it matter if you spread your $1,000 across these 10
investments rather than two? (LO4)
Answer: Yes. The gains from spreading would be larger if you spread the $1000
across ten investments. From the formula in Appendix 5B, we can see that the
5-7
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
19. You are considering three investments, each with the same expected value and each
with two possible payoffs. The investments are sold only in increments of $500. You
have $1,000 to invest and so you have the option of either splitting your money
equally between two of the investments or placing all $1,000 in one of the
investments. If the payoffs from investment A are independent of the payoffs from
investments B and C and the payoffs from B and C are perfectly negatively correlated
with each other (meaning when B pays off, C doesn’t and vice versa), which
investment strategy will minimize your risk? (LO4)
Answer: You should put $500 into each of B and C. Because one pays off when the
other doesn’t, you eliminate your risk by hedging. Spreading your investment across
A and either B or C would reduce your risk compared with investing all $1000 in one
investment but would not eliminate it.
20. In which of the following cases would you be more likely to decide whether to take
on the risk involved by looking at a measure of the value at risk? (LO2)
a) You are unemployed and are considering investing your life savings of
$10,000 to start up a new business.
b) You have a full-time job paying $100,000 a year and are considering making a
$1,000 investment in stock of a well-established, stable company.
Explain your reasoning.
Answer: You should be more concerned about the value at risk - a measure of the
worse possible loss with a given probability - in case a. Experiencing that loss would
likely have dire consequences. In the second case, even in the unlikely event that the
investment lost all its value, the outcome would not be catastrophic.
21. You have the option to invest in either country A or country B but not both. You
carry out some research and conclude that the two countries are similar in every way
except that the returns on assets of different classes tend to move together much more
in country A– that is, they are more highly correlated in country A than in country B.
Which country would choose to invest in and why? (LO4)
Answer: You should invest in country B as the benefits from diversification are
greater than in country A. If everything else is equal, spreading your risk across
different asset classes brings greater benefit when the correlation among the returns is
lower.
Data Exploration
1. Plot the percentage change from a year earlier of the value of the S&P 500 stock
index (FRED code: SP500). Visually, has the risk of the S&P 500 index changed over
time? (LO2) (Hint: At the FRED Web site, go to “Data Tools,” then “Create Your
5-8
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
Own Graphs,” and input “SP500” in the search box. Then, change the Frequency
dropdown box to “Monthly,” change the Units dropdown box to “Percent Change
from Year Ago,” and select “Redraw Graph.”)
Answer: Visual examination of the plot below does not show any obvious change in
the percentage volatility of stock prices, especially if the crisis years of 2007-2009 are
excluded. If this is approximately correct, then the variance or standard deviation of
the index in percentage terms is a useful indicator of the risk.
2. Another way to understand stock market risk is to examine how investors expect risk
to evolve in the near future. The DJIA volatility index (FRED code: VXDCLS) is one
such measure. Plot the level of this volatility index since October 1997 and as a
second line, the percent change from a year ago of the S&P 500 index (FRED code:
SP500). Compare their patterns. (LO2) (Hint: Using the figure from Data Exploration
question 1, select “Add Data Series” and input “VXDCLS” in the search box. Select
“Copy to All Lines” to start the date range when the volatility index becomes
available (1997). Set the Units dropdown box to “Percent” (to show the volatility
index level) and select “Redraw Graph.”)
Answer: The plot shows several spikes in the DJIA volatility index, usually in periods
when the S&P 500 index is falling. For example, the volatility index peaked above
70% in the crisis of 2007-2009. In contrast, the volatility index is usually low when
the stock market index is rising (see the period between 2003 and 2007). The causal
relationship between expectations and market price swings can vary over time: falling
5-9
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
3. For the period since 1986, plot on one graph the 30-year conventional mortgage rate
(FRED code: MORTG) and the one-year adjustable mortgage rate (FRED code:
MORTGAGE1US). Explain their systematic relationship using Core Principle 2.
(LO2) (Hint: Recall that to plot two indicators on the same graph, start with one
indicator and then add another. At the FRED Web site, go to “Data Tools,” then
“Create Your Own Graphs,” and input “MORTG” in the search box. Then select
“Add Data Series,” type “MORTGAGE1US in the search box. At the Observation
Date Range for MORTGAGE1US, select “Copy to All Lines” and then and hit
“Redraw Graph.”)
5-10
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
Answer: The plots of the 30-year and 1-year adjustable rates are:
The one-year adjustable rate is systematically below the 30-year conventional rate
since the borrower assumes the risk of rising interest rates. Since risk requires
compensation, the borrower obtains a lower initial rate and may end up paying higher
rates later on.
4. Plot the difference since 1979 between the Moody’s Baa bond index (FRED code:
BAA) and the U.S. Treasury 10-year bond yield (FRED code: GS10). Comment on
the trend and variability of this “credit risk premium” (see Chapter 7) before and after
the 2007-2009 financial crisis. (LO1) (Hints: To find the difference, follow the
procedure in Chapter 4, Data Exploration question 4, starting with the Moody’s Baa
bond index.)
5-11
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Chapter 05 – Understanding Risk
Baa bonds are corporate issues with a higher probability of default than for
government bonds, so the yield difference is an indicator of default risk. This “credit
risk premium” rose sharply during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. It slid again after
the crisis, but remained somewhat elevated for several years compared to past periods
of economic expansion.
5-12
Copyright © 2015 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of
McGraw-Hill Education.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Abrégé de
l'histoire de l'Ukraine
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.
Language: French
ABRÉGÉ
DE L’HISTOIRE
DE L’UKRAINE
PAR
MICHEL HRUCHEVSKY
professeur à l’Université
Paris,
M. Giard et E. Brière
16, rue Soufflot.
Genève, Prague,
Librairie A. Eggimann Librairie ouvrière
rue du Marché 40. Hybernská ulice 7.
1920
Imprimerie J. Skalák a spol., Prague II., Hybernská ulice 7.
Avant propos.
I. S. U.