Article history: Received 10 October 2009 Available online 26 May 2010 In this article we investigate the relation between population and real wages in the Italian economy during the period 1320–1870. The main result is that the positive check is strong and statistically significant but the other equilibrating mechanism in the Malthusian model – the preventive check – based on the positive rela...

We specify a class of non-linear and non-Gaussian models for which we estimate and forecast the conditional distributions with daily frequency. We use these forecasts to calculate VaR measures for three different equity markets (US, GB and Japan). These forecasts are evaluated on the basis of different statistical performance measures as well as on the basis of their economic costs that go alon...

Relying on a present value model with time-varying expected returns, and incorporating a quite general class of processes to model bubble-like stock price deviations from the long-run equilibrium, we provide empirical evidence on the U.S. log dividend–price ratio over the 1871:1–2001:9 period, as well as for several sub-periods. The application of a momentum threshold autoregressive technique d...

This paper proposes a factor augmented autoregressive distributed lag (FADL) framework for analyzing the dynamic effects of common and idiosyncratic shocks. We first estimate the common shocks from a large panel of data with a strong factor structure. Impulse responses are then obtained from an autoregression, augmented with a distributed lag of the estimated common shocks. The approach has thr...

The coe)cient matrix of a cointegrated +rst-order autoregression is estimated by reduced rank regression (RRR), depending on the larger canonical correlations and vectors of the +rst di.erence of the observed series and the lagged variables. In a suitable coordinate system the components of the least-squares (LS) estimator associated with the lagged nonstationary variables are of order 1=T , wh...

We propose a new method to determine the cointegration rank in the error correction model of Engle and Granger (1987). To this end, we first estimate the cointegration vectors in terms of a residual-based principal component analysis. Then the cointegration rank, together with the lag order, is determined by a penalized goodness-of-fit measure. We have shown that the estimated cointegration vec...

We consider the problem of concurrent portfolio losses in two non-overlapping credit portfolios. In order to explore the full statistical dependence structure of such portfolio losses, we estimate their empirical pairwise copulas. Instead of a Gaussian dependence, we typically find a strong asymmetry in the copulas. Concurrent large portfolio losses are much more likely than small ones. Studyin...

In the paper a new approach to the modelling of common components in long memory processes is introduced. The approach is based on a two-step procedure relying on Fourier transform methods (…rst step) and principal components analysis (second step), which, di¤erently from previous contributions to the literature, allows the modelling of large data sets, both in terms of temporal and cross-secti...

This paper provides closed-form likelihood approximations for multivariate jump-diffusion processes widely used in finance. For a fixed order of approximation, the maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE) computed from this approximate likelihood achieves the asymptotic efficiency of the true yet uncomputable MLE as the sampling interval shrinks. This method is used to uncover the realignment probabi...

The paper evaluates the distributional effects of conventional and unconventional monetary policies for the USA. The distributional effects are evaluated for the overall impact on the income distribution, using Gini index. The paper also assesses the effects of conventional and unconventional monetary policies on the different parts of income distribution, employing corresponding percentile rat...