Using more than two years of daily interest rate cap price data, this paper provides a systematic documentation of a volatility smile in cap prices. We find that Black (1976) implied volatilities exhibit an asymmetric smile (sometimes called a sneer) with a stronger skew for in-the-money caps...

This paper contributes to the literature comparing the relative performance of financial intermediaries and markets by studying an environment in which a trade-off between risk sharing and growth arises endogenously. Financial intermediaries provide insurance to households against a liquidity...

A large number of microeconomic decision variables such as investments, prices, inventories or employment are characterized by intermittent large adjustments. The behavior of those variables has been often modeled as following state-dependent rules. The optimality of such state-dependent rules...

Greene (2002, 2004) examines several extensions of the panel stochastic frontier models including what he calls the “true†fixed and random effect stochastic frontier models. In this paper we extend these two models to their semiparametric alternatives where the functional form for...

The paper applies a popular methodology of competing risks to the analysis of the timing and interaction between the Deutsche Mark/U.S. dollar transactions, quotes, and cancellations in the Reuters D2000-2 electronic brokerage system. Consistently with previous stock market studies, the bid-ask...

Volatility models have been playing an important role in economics and finance. Using a multivariate generalized spectral approach, we propose a new class of generally applicable omnibus tests for univariate and multivariate volatility models. Both GARCH models and stochastic volatility models...

This paper studies the limit distributions of Monte Carlo estimators of diffusion processes. Two types of estimators are examined. The first one is based on the Euler scheme applied to the original processes; the second applies the Euler scheme to a variance-stabilizing transformation of the...

We introduce a new approximation method for the distribution of functions of random variables that are real-valued. The approximation involves moment matching and exploits properties of the class of normal inverse Gaussian distributions. In the paper we we examine the how well the different...

The paper examines the processes underlying economic fluctuations by investigating the volatility moderation of U.S. economy in the early 1980's. We decompose the volatility decline using a dynamic factor framework into a common stochastic trend, common transitory component and idiosyncratic...

This paper considers tests of misspecification in a heteroscedastic transformation model. We derive Lagrange multiplier (LM) statistics for (i) testing functional form and heteroscedasticity jointly, (ii) testing functional form in the presence of heteroscedasticity, and (iii) testing...