This paper develops a new test for speculative bubbles, which is applied to data for the Japanese yen, the German mark and the Canadian dollar exchange rates from 1977 to 1991. The test assumes that bubbles display aparticular kind of regime-switching behaviour, which is shown to imply...

In this paper, we use an extension of Hamilton's (1989) Markov switching techniques to describe and analyze stock market returns. Using new tests, we find very strong evidence of switching behaviour. A major innovation of our work is to use a multivariate specification which allows us to examine...

This paper tests between fads and bubbles using a new empirical strategy (based on switching regression econometrics) for distinguishing between competing asset pricing models. By extending the Blanchard and Watson (1982) model, we show how stochastic bubbles can lead to regime switching in...

This paper is a user's guide to a set of Gauss procedures developed at the Bank of Canada for estimating regime-switching models. The procedures can estimate relatively quickly a wide variety of switching models and so should prove useful to the applied researcher. Sample program listings are...

This paper explores two very different models which might account for stock market crashes. A key innovative feature of our paper is that we use the models to show how their implications for stock market crashes may be tested using switching-regression econometrics. We are careful to show that...

In this paper we analyze the asymptotic properties of the popular distribution tail index estimator by B. Hill (1975) for possibly heavy- tailed, heterogenous, dependent processes. We prove the Hill estimator is weakly consistent for processes with extremes that form mixingale sequences, and...

In this paper, we develop a parametric test procedure for multiple horizon "Granger" causality and apply the procedure to the well established problem of determining causal patterns in aggregate monthly U.S. money and output. As opposed to most papers in the parametric causality literature, we...

Simulation evidence is presented on the finite sample properties of two tests for stationarity recently proposed by Kwiatkowski, Phillips and Schmidt (1991) and Park (1990). Unlike earlier unit-root tests, these test the null of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root, thereby...

The universal method for testing linearity against smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) alternatives is the linearization of the STAR model around the null nuisance parameter value, and performing F-tests on polynomial regressions in the spirit of the RESET test. Polynomial regressors,...