Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Economics - Finance, grade: 1.7, University of Leicester (Center of Management), language: English, abstract: To date, nobody has formulated a comprehensive theorem to determine gold valuation or precious metal prices. Until fairly recently, Eugene Fama’s Efficient Market Hypothesis was the predominant paradigm explaining asset markets but today it is widely acknowledged that markets can be irrational and investors are prone to act irrationally. When trying to explain gold market anomalies, behavioural science approaches can be useful. Phenomena such as herding (‘group think’), ‘safe value bias’ and investors’ ‘excessive extrapolation’ can help explain positive price performance over a certain time. In this dissertation, the author investigates the applicability of a multivariate ARIMA (auto-regressive, integrated, moving average) model to help explain gold price movements from 1973 to 2011. This model uses the gold price and independent variables such as inflation, real interest rates, silver prices, the US dollar money supply (M2), oil prices, the MSCI World index and the S&P 500 as these are linked to gold and/or highly correlated with the gold price. The evaluation criteria were defined as R-squared, mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and BIC. The model was calculated over so-called ‘normal times’ and times of crises (one political, one financial). The researcher used SPSS’ Expert Modeler to find the best-fitting ARIMA model and to identify the independent variables significantly contributing to the fit of the model. Remarkably, a multivariate ARIMA model using independent variables explained almost twice as much of the variability of the gold price as a univariate ARIMA model using only the gold price. Also, throughout the complete period and during normal times the model explained a much higher percentage of the variability of the gold price than during crises and comparably more of the independent variables contributed significantly to the fit of the model (5 vs. 2). This can be explained by investors’ tendencies to buy gold to preserve their assets (“safe value”), to follow the crowd (“herding”) and to extrapolate past price chart developments. The results show that in an attempt to discern the cause of gold price movements, a multivariate ARIMA model outperforms a univariate ARIMA model significantly. The results of the study furthermore indicate researchers evaluating different methods to fit a time series should consider a multivariate ARIMA model, especially if the independent variables are highly correlated with the dependent variable.

Gold is a scarce commodity and has become a rare metal; currently, 165,000 metric tons of gold exists above ground. Between 1870 and 1900 all major industrial countries, other than China, switched to the gold standard, linking their currencies to gold; hence, the gold standard was adopted. The present research project aims to study and analyze the relationship between gold prices on one hand, and the Brent oil prices, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Consumer Price Index (CPI), and Euro/USD exchange rate, on the other hand. The study manifests numerous findings as well as the interesting and important relationship of the aforementioned assets. Taking into consideration Toros Sajians (2006) empirical study about the price determinants of gold, a comparison was made and unit root tests were carried out on his sample (January 1997-March 2005), as well as on our sample. Elasticities on the log-levels and levels, with and without lagged dependent variables, were calculated and our ...

This is a timely review of the gold standard covering the 110 years of its operation until 1931, when Britain abandoned it in the midst of the Depression. Current dissatisfaction with floating rates of exchange has spurred interest in a return to a commodity standard. The studies in this volume were designed to gain a better understanding of the historical gold standard, but they also throw light on the question of whether restoring it today could help cure inflation, high interest rates, and low productivity growth. The volume includes a review of the literature on the classical gold standard; studies the experience with gold in England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Canada; and perspectives on international linkages and the stability of price-level trends under the gold standard. The articles and commentaries reflect strong, conflicting views among hte participants on issues of central bank behavior, purchasing-power an interest-rate parity, independent monetary policies, economic growth, the "Atlantic economy," and trends in commodity prices and long-term interest rates. This is a thoughtful and provocative book.

The purpose of the Special Issue “Quantitative Methods in Economics and Finance” of the journal Risks was to provide a collection of papers that reflect the latest research and problems of pricing complex derivates, simulation pricing, analysis of financial markets, and volatility of exchange rates in the international context. This book can be used as a reference for academicians and researchers who would like to discuss and introduce new developments in the field of quantitative methods in economics and finance and explore applications of quantitative methods in other business areas.

This book presents modern developments in time series econometrics that are applied to macroeconomic and financial time series. It contains the most important approaches to analyze time series which may be stationary or nonstationary.