The episodes of stock market crises in Europe and the U.S.A.since the year 2000,and the fragility of the international stock markets,have sparked the interest of researchers in understanding and in modeling the markets’ rising volatilities in order to prevent against crises.Portfolio managers...

Inflation is a far from homogeneous phenomenon, but this fact is ignored in most work on consumer price inflation. Using a novel methodology grounded in theory, the ten sub-components of the consumer price index (excluding mortgage interest rates, or CPIX) for South Africa are modeled separately...

This paper proposes a comparison of three nonlinear error- correction models to account for the asymmetric and slow adjustment dynamics of the Dollar-Sterling real exchange rate over a long period (1957-202). We conclude that two NEC models adequately describe the nonlinear mean-reverting...

In this paper we give the theoretical basis of a possible explanation for two stylized facts observed in long log-return series: the long range dependence (LRD) in volatility and the integrated GARCH (IGARCH). Both these effects can be theoretically explained if one assumes that the data is...

The Asymmetry or counter-cycle nature and its influence on the persistence of the registered unemployment rate is a traditional topic of the economics theory’s analysis. However, studies of the Spanish unemployment done up to now have not dealt with asymmetry. General studies about Spanish...

This paper investigates the usefulness of Italian consumer surveys as estimation and forecasting tool over the period 1982-2003. To this end, standard consumption equations are estimated and then compared, in terms of in-sample and out-of-sample predictive ability, with corresponding models...

In this paper we show the degrees of persistence of the time series if eight European stock market indices are measured, after their lack of ergodicity and stationarity has been established. The proper identification of the nature of the persistence of financial time series forms a crucial step...

The behaviour of an emerging market, the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE), after the introduction of the euro is investigated. The underlying assumption is that stock prices would be more transparent; their performance easier to compare; the exchange rate risk eliminated and as a result we expect the...

We build a 4-equation model of the inflation process in South Africa (which has recently adopted inflation targeting), including the exchange rate, consumer prices, producer price, and import prices. This provides useful information on the speed and extent of exchange rate pass- through, and...

We argue that the current framework for predictive ability testing (e.g., West, 1996) is not necessarily useful for real-time forecast selection, i.e., for assessing which of two competing forecasting methods will perform better in the future. We propose an alternative framework for...