Assessment of Informal Cross-Border Fish Trade in the Southern Africa Region： A Case of Malawi and Zambia

lntra-regional fish trade has potential in addressing the region＇s food and nutrition insecurity, as well as poverty reduction, by enabling movement of fish from countries of surplus to those with deficit. However, informal fish trade, just like all informal economic activities, has been overlooked and neglected in many national and regional policies, leading to obscurity of such an important part of the fisheries sector. This study examined the situation in the cross-border informal fish trade in order to deepen our understanding about the traders, the factors influencing the traders to use informal trade channels, the structure of the products traded and the challenges traders face, as well as propose policy direction to enhance the cross-border fish trade in the Southern Africa region. The study revealed that female traders dominated informal fish trade. In both Malawi and Zambia, an estimated 45,285.52 metric tonnes of fish valued at 82.14 million dollars and 102,263.9 metric tolmes of fish valued at 3.3 million dollars were informally traded. The key species involved in informal cross-border trade in Malawi and Zambia were the small pelagics, usipa （Engraulicypris sardella） from Lake Malawi and dagaa （Rastrineobola argentea） from Lake Tanganyika, respectively. It emerged from focus group discussions with informal fish traders and key informants＇ interviews with border post fish inspection and revenue collection officials that traders are put off by the cross-border regulations. Therefore, it is important for countries in the Southern African Development Community （SADC） region to regularize and formalize cross-border trade, particularly in small pelagic fish species, since this species plays a great role in the livelihoods, food and nutrition security of many people in the region, especially the rural and urban poor. It is also important for governments to support processors and traders to improve the quality of fish being traded, and decentralize issuing of the import/export certificates and other cross-border support documents. Lastly, there is a need to establish informal fish trade monitoring systems to adequately quantify the volumes traded.

Short Sellers Are Indeed Sophisticated Traders!

Current literature shows that short sellers earn positive returns on their trades and that the superior performance of short sellers is due to their better analytic skills. In this paper, we investigate, if it is possible for a short seller to make profits even if he does not have insider information or is not sophisticated. We use a one period model and assume that stock price follows a random walk with a positive drift to show that the＇ expected return for an uninformed short seller is always negative and his risks are always greater than the risks of a stock buyer. Hence a short seller would not trade unless he has superior trading skills and/or information. We also show that the market conditions when the stock＇s dividend yield is greater than the risk free rate gives the shortsellers advantage over stock buyers.

Impact of trading hours extensions on foreign exchange volatility:intraday evidence from the Moscow exchange

Using transaction-level tick-by-tick data of same-and next-day settlement of the Russian Ruble versus the US Dollar exchange rate(RUB/USD)traded on the Moscow Exchange Market during the period 2005–2013,we analyze the impact of trading hours extensions on volatility.During the sample period,the Moscow Exchange extended trading hours three times for the same-day settlement and two times for the next-day settlement of the RUB/USD rate.To analyze the effect of the implementations,various measures of historical and realized volatility are calculated for 5-and 15-min intraday intervals spanning a period of three months both prior to and following trading hours extensions.Besides historical volatility measures,we also examine volume and spread.We apply an autoregressive moving average-autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity(ARMA-GARCH)model utilizing realized volatility and a trade classification rule to estimate the probability of informed trading.The extensions of trading hours cause a significant increase in both volatility and volume for further analyzing the reasons behind volatility changes.Volatility changes mostly occur after the opening of the market.The length of the extension has a significant positive effect on realized volatility.The results indicate that informed trading increased substantially after the opening for the rate of same-day settlement,whereas this is not observed for next-day settlement.Although trading hours extensions raise opportunities for more transactions and liquidity in foreign exchange markets,they may also lead to higher volatility in the market.Furthermore,this distortion is more significant at opening and midday.A potential explanation for the increased volatility mostly at the opening is that the trading hours extension attracts informed traders rather than liquidity providers.

Node of International Flows or the Other Face of El Eulma

El Eulma has become an important node of transnational informal trade. It maintains strong relationships with international market places since the period where the ＂Trabendo＂ have seen a wide development in Algeria. On the national and regional level, the city of El Eulma is the main element of the network of informal merchant areas known by ＂Douba＇l＂ markets. The most important areas are located in the central and eastern of Algeria. This dual membership was conferred to it because of the strong presence of import companies and the existence of discrete and dynamic networks well-organized, formed of false importers, This article focuses on commercial trajectories, the forms of networks and their developments and tries to know the logic. From these trajectories, how the merchant places could be formed in Algeria, as was the case for El Eulma.

Liquidity Dynamics Around Intraday Price Jumps in Chinese Stock Market

Using 4128 single jumps detected from high frequency data of 220 individual stocks in SZ300 P index, this paper investigates the liquidity dynamics around price jumps in Chinese market.Some interesting empirical results are obtained and the corresponding explanations are given. The frequency of positive jumps is quite higher than that of negative jumps. The trading volumes and average trade sizes are all in a high level around positive jumps. The relatively low liquidities around negative jumps show that negative jumps may be generated and enlarged by poor liquidity provision.The price reversal after price jumps is significant, and price reversal lasts longer after positive jumps.Moreover, the size and direction of jumps are significantly correlated with the returns and trades in the post-jump trading time. These findings are believed to be associated with the high proportion of retail investors and their herding behavior for price trend chasing.