This paper studies the All Ordinaries Index in Australia, and its futures contract known as the Share Price Index. We use a new form of smooth transition model to account for a variety of nonlinearities caused by transaction costs and other market/data imperfections, and given the recent...

This paper investigates cross-country evidence on how capital markets affect business cycle volatilities. In contrast to the large and growing literature of finance and growth, empirical work on the relationship between finance, particularly capital markets, and volatility has been relatively...

This paper investigates the relationships of capital market, severity of economic contraction, and probability of an economic downturn. The finding supports a theoretical prediction that countries with more advanced capital markets would face less severe business cycle output contraction, and a...

This paper investigates the relationships of capital markets, frequency of recession, and fraction of time the economy is in recession. The main finding is that frequency of recession is not robustly linked to measures of capital market development. However, the fraction of time the economy...

A Bayesian approach to option pricing is presented, in which posterior inference about the underlying returns process is conducted implicitly via observed option prices. A range of models allowing for conditional leptokurtosis, skewness and time-varying volatility in returns are considered, with...

A general parametric framework is developed for pricing S&P500 options. Skewness and leptokurtosis in stock returns as well as time-varying volatility are priced. The parametric pricing model nests the Black-Scholes model and can explain volatility smiles and skews in stock options. The data...

Empirical tests of option pricing models are joint tests of the 'correctness' of the model, the efficiency of the market and the simultaneity of price observations. Some degree of nonsimultaeity can be expected in all but the most liquid markets and is therefore evident in many non-US markets....

In this paper we apply Bayesian methods to estimate a stochastic volatility model using both the prices of the asset and the prices of options written on the asset. Implicit posterior densities for the parameters of the volatility model, for the latent volatilities and for the market price of...

A Bayesian estimation procedure is developed for estimating multiple regime vector autoregressive models appropriate for deviations from financial arbitrage relationships. This approach has clear advantages over classical stepwise threshold autoregressive analysis.

Volatility smiles arise in currency option markets when empirical exchange rate returns distributions exhibit leptokurtosis. This feature of empirical distributions is symptomatic of turbulent periods when exchange rate movements are in excess of movements based on the assumption of normality....