Financial decisions of economic agents are based on volatility considerations. However, no aggregate indicators have been used by policymakers and regulators to assess the market risk environment. This paper applies a market volatility indicator to analyze the Israeli's transition toward...

Using the ARFIMA-FIGARCH model, this paper studies the efficiency of the Japanese equity market by examining the statistical properties of the return and volatility of the Nikkei 225. It shows that both follow a long range dependence, which stands against the efficient market hypothesis (EMH)....

This paper examines volatility spillovers from mature to emerging stock markets and tests for changes in the transmission mechanism-contagion-during turbulences in mature markets. Tri-variate GARCH-BEKK models of returns in global (mature), regional, and local markets are estimated for 41...

This paper investigates empirically the sources of aggregate output growth and the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) in Niger between 1963 and 2003. A growth accounting analysis indicates that the erosion in output per capita over the sample period is due to the negative growth of...

A stochastic volatility model where volatility was driven solely by a latent variable called news was estimated for three stock indices. A Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm was used for estimating Bayesian parameters and filtering volatilities. Volatility persistence being close to one was...

This paper identifies and describes key features of Caribbean business cycles during the period 1963-2003. In particular, the chronologies in the Caribbean classical cycle (expansions and contractions in the level of output) and growth cycle (periods of above-trend and below-trend rates of...

This paper analyzes the seven valuation methods for unlisted direct investment equity included in the recently adopted IMF Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, Sixth Edition (BPM6). Based on publicly available Danish data, we test the three methods that are generally...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the impact of competition on firm productivity. Using firm-level observations from the World Bank Enterprise Survey database, we find a positive and robust causal relationship between our proxies for competition and our measures of productivity. We also...

This paper focuses on evidence from stock markets as it investigates the spillovers from the United States to mainland China and Hong Kong SAR during the subprime crisis. Using both univariate and multivariate GARCH models, this paper finds that China's stock market is not immune to the...

This Selected Issues paper on the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) underlies key features of business cycles. To obtain new measures of classical and growth cycles, simple rules were applied to date turning points in the classical business cycle, and a recently developed frequency domain...