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 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....

A new class of option price models is developed and applied to options on the Australian S&P200 Index. The class of models generalizes the traditional Black-Scholes framework by accommodating time-varying conditional volatility, skewness and excess kurtosis in the underlying returns process. An...

Fluctuations in commodity prices are a major concern to many market participants. This paper uses realized volatility methods to calculate daily volatility and correlation estimates for three grain futures prices (corn, soybean and wheat). The realized volatility estimates exhibit the properties...

This paper investigates whether the risk-return relation varies, depending on changing market volatility and up/down market conditions. Three market regimes based on the level of conditional volatility of market returns are specified - 'low', 'neutral' and 'high'. The market model is extended to...

In this paper Bayesian methods are applied to a stochastic volatility model using both the prices of the asset and the prices of options written on the asset. Posterior densities for all model parameters, latent volatilities and the market price of volatility risk are produced via a hybrid...