This paper explores the tail features of daily stock returns. Recently developed versions of the Hill estimator are used to measure the extreme positive and negative returns for a small set of individual daily stocks covering the period of 1926 through 2004. The findings report many of the accepted stylized facts about stock returns. Scaling exponents are reliably near 3, and generally stable o...

Are share markets too volatile? While it is difficult to ignore share market volatility it is important to determine whether volatility is excessive. This paper replicates the Shiller (1981) test as well as applying standard time series analysis to annual Australian stock market data for the period 1883 to 1999. While Shiller’s test suggests the possibility of excess volatility, time series ana...

We agree that either mistaking a stochastic trend for a deterministic trend (or vice-versa) is consequential for unit root tests and for tests of nonlinear serial dependence. In addition, we comment that similar results obtain for ordinary parameter inference in simple linear models. In particular, we note that detrending stochastically trended data with a deterministic polynomial or by applyin...

K e y w o r d s: prediction, model comparison, density forecasting, inflation, VAR models, shrinkage. J E L Classification: E31, E37, C53, C32.

Two sources of asymmetry in the Phillips curve are considered: the “capacity constraint hypothesis” and downward rigidity on wages and/or prices. The short run trade-off between inflation changes and the unemployment gap is modeled in a state-space framework that allows for time variation in both the NAIRU and the trade-off parameter. Empirical evidence for the US using the Kalman filter favors...

In this paper we use the frequency domain Granger causality test of Breitung/Candelon (2006) to analyse short and long-run causality between energy prices and prices of food commodities. We find that the oil price Granger causes all the considered food prices. However, when controlling for business cycle fluctuations this link exists especially at low frequencies. Thus, short-run phenomena like...

We analyze the limiting distribution of Rivers and Vuong’s (2002) statistic for choosing between two competing dynamic models based on a comparison of GMM minimands. It is shown that: (i) if both models are misspecified then the statistic has a standard normal distribution under the null hypothesis of equal fit but the ranking could be determined by the choice of the weighting matrix; (ii) if b...

This article investigates the effects and transmission channels of shocks between two asymmetric neighboring countries. In particular, we investigate Austria and Germany which are highly integrated due to their common language and common membership of the European Monetary Union. Generalized impulse response functions reveal that there are large and significant effects of shocks to the German e...

In this paper we review the factors that may lead to structural changes in stock market volatility and present an analysis that assesses whether emerging stock market volatility has changed significantly over the period 1976:01-2002:03. This period corresponds to the years of more profound development of both the financial and the productive sides in emerging countries. We use alternative metho...