We introduce a Nelson-Siegel type interest rate term structure model with the underlying yield factors following autoregressive processes revealing time-varying stochastic volatility. The factor volatilities capture risk inherent to the term structure and are associated with the time-varying...

Recently, Diebold and Li (2003) obtained good forecasting results foryield curves in a reparametrized Nelson-Siegel framework. We analyze similarmodeling approaches for price curves of variance swaps that serve nowadaysas hedging instruments for options on realized variance. We consider the...

In this note we establish the existence of the first two moments of the asymptotic tracestatistic, which appears as weak limit of the likelihood ratio statistic for testing the cointe-gration rank in a vector autoregressive model and whose moments may be used to developpanel cointegration tests....

Using data for six OECD countries, this paper studies the effect of macroeconomic conditions on the mortality index kt in the well-known Lee-Carter model. Significant correlations are found with real GDP growth rates in Australia, Canada, and the United States, and with unemployment rate changes...

We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables with the example of age-specific mortality in the U.S., building on the Lee-Carter approach and extendingit in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables underlying...

Information ows across international financial markets typically occur within hours, making volatility spillover appear contemporaneous in daily data. Such simultaneous transmission of variances is featured by the stochastic volatility model developed in this paper, in contrast to usually...

This paper analyses mutual causalities between crude oil price and euro / US dollar exchange rate. Instead of focusing on long-run macroeconomic linkages like the bulk of therelevant literature, the present approach takes a financial markets perspective using daily data. The fast-running...

In this paper, we study the dynamic interdependencies between high-frequency volatility, liquidity demand as well as trading costs in an electronic limit order book market. Using data from the Australian Stock Exchange we model 1-minsquared mid-quote returns, average trade sizes, number of...

Dimension reduction techniques for functional data analysis model and approximate smooth random functions by lower dimensional objects. In many applications the focus of interest lies not only in dimension reduction but also in the dynamic behaviour of the lower dimensional objects. The most...

We present an object-oriented software framework allowing to specify, solve, and estimate nonlinear dynamic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. The implemented solution methods for finding the unknown policy function are the standard linearization around the deterministic steady state, and a...