Filtering techniques are often applied to the estimation of dynamic latent variable models. However, these techniques are often based on a set assumptions which restrict models to be specified in a linear state-space form. Numerical filtering techniques have been propsed that avoid invoking such...

The usual index of leading indicators has constant weights on its components and is therefore implicitly premised on the assumption that the dynamical properties of the economy remain the same over time and across phases of the business cycle. We explore the possibility that the business cycle...

Strong seasonality in demand, a short product life cycle, and the absence of any price competition make the release date of first-run movies one of the main strategic decisions taken by movies' distributors. Movies are typically released on a Friday within a short release season, thus making the...

In this paper we extend the setting analysed in Hahn and Hausman (2002a) by allowing for conditionally heteroscedastic disturbances. We start by considering the type of conditional variance-covariance matrices proposed by Engle and Kroner (1995) and we show that, when we impose a GARCH...

Many securities are, to a certain extent, subject to credit risk in one way or another. Both the financial institutions and regulators are keen to have their credit risk exposures well managed. In order to fulfill their needs, the market for credit derivatives has become one of the fast growing...

In examining the likely consequences of nonsense relationship, Granger and Newbold (1974) made it clear that the differencing is not the universal sure solution to the problem of spurious regression models. This has prompted the discovery of the cointegration regression estimation by Engle and...

The use of the Beveridge Nelson decomposition in macroeconomic analysis involves the truncation and estimation of infinite weighted sums of random variables, whereas the single source of error (SSE) state space approach provides a simple and effective framework that leads to exactly the same...

In this paper we propose a general component-driven model to analyze economic data with different characteristics (or regimes) in different time periods. Motivated by empirical data characteristics, our discussion focuses on a simple model driven by a random walk component and a stationary ARMA...

The properties and applications of the normal log-normal (NLN) mixture are considered. The moment of the NLN mixture is shown to be finite for any positive order. The expectations of exponential functions of a NLN mixture variable are also investigated. The kurtosis and skewness of the NLN...

This paper investigates the effect of exchange rate volatility on US-UK bilateral trade flows. As part of econometric problems arising from a generated variable, we consider a special case when an ARCH type auxiliary model is used to measure uncertainty in the exchange rate and discuss a...