We consider whether oil prices can account for business cycle asymmetries. We test for asymmetries based on the Markov switching autoregressive model popularized by Hamilton (1989), using the tests devised by Clements and Krolzig (2000). We select the transformation of the oil price of Lee, Ni and Ratti (1995), based on a linear analysis of the relationship between output growth and the oil pri...

This paper proposes a new method to forecast S&P 500 return distribution by combining quantile regression models using macro-finance variables with volatility-based models including various standard EGARCH and stochastic volatility specifications. 30 density forecasting models are compared and combined in an out-of-sample forecasting exercise. Using macro-finance variables is found to help subs...

This article presents some evidence for the presence of a causal relationship between price and volume in the crude oil futures market. The results of linear causality testing reveal the presence of causality running from volume to price but not vice versa. While the results of testing for nonlinear causality are inconsistent, most of the evidence shows that causality runs in both directions. I...

We model the conditional mean and volatility of stock returns as a latent vector autoregressive (VAR) process to study the contemporaneous and intertemporal relationship between expected returns and risk in a flexible statistical framework and without relying on exogenous predictors. We find a strong and robust negative correlation between the innovations to the conditional moments that leads t...

abstract in this paper we test two versions of convergence hypothesis namely deterministic or conditional convergence and stochastic or catching up hypothesis using carrion-i-silvestre et al. (2005) stationary test. the results show latin and south american countries (lsa) catching up process toward the usa failed in 1980s and somewhat in 1990s. but in 2000s most of them could lie in convergenc...

This study investigates an adjustment process in the bilateral trade balances of five countries within the Caribbean, with their largest trading partner, namely the United States. Unlike previous studies, this study controls for oil prices which play a vital role in the countries’ trade balances. A panel econometric technique was utilized using annual data over the period 19802012. Analysis of ...

We formalize the idea that uncertainty is generated by news about future developments in economic conditions which are not perfectly predictable by the agents. With a simple model of limited information we show that uncertainty shocks can be obtained as the square of news shocks. We develop a two-step econometric procedure to estimate the effects of news and we find highly nonlinear effects. La...

This paper considers vertical price relationships between wholesalers and retailers on five local maize markets in Benin. We show that if the common factor and the long-run disequilibrium error are not explicitly taken into account in testing the channel model, one can easily be wrong about how restrictions on the error-correction structure must be interpreted in terms of economic power in the ...

This paper examines the effects of inflation and currency substitution volatility on the average rates of inflation and currency substitution for twelve emerging market economies. Using a bivariate GARCH-in-Mean model, which accommodates for asymmetric and spillover effects of inflation and currency substitution innovations on their volatilities, we find that for the majority of the countries i...

We investigate non-linearities in the stock return trading volume relationship by using daily data for 16 European countries in an asymmetric vector autoregressive model. In this framework, we test for asymmetries and analyze the dynamic relationship using a simulation based procedure for computing asymmetric impulse response functions. We find that stock returns have a significant influence on...