We characterize asset return linkages during periods of stress by an extremal dependence measure. Contrary to correlation analysis, this nonparametric measure is not predisposed toward the normal distribution and can allow for nonlinear relationships. Our estimates for the G-5 countries suggest...

The aim of the paper is to obtain confidence intervals for the tail index and high quantiles taking into account the optimal rate of convergence of the estimator. The common approach to obtaining confidence intervals presented in the literature is to use the normal distribution approximation at...

Exchange rate returns are fat-tailed distributed. We provide evidence that the apparent non-normality derives from the behavior of macroeconomic fundamentals. Economic and probabilistic arguments are offered for such a relationship. Empirical support is given by testing against normality and...

This paper presents a unified framework for characterizing symmetric equilibrium in simultaneous move, two-player, rank-order contests with complete information, in which each player's strategy generates direct or indirect affine "spillover" effects that depend on the rank-order of her decision...

Portfolio risk is in an important way driven by 'abnormal' returns emanating from heavy tailed distributed asset returns. The theory of regular variation and extreme values provides a model for this feature of financial data. We first review this theory and subsequently study the problem of...

A flurry of recent articles has argued on the basis of constructed European wide monetary aggregates that the demand for EURO's will be more stable than the current demand for national currencies. In policy circles this seemingly moderating effect of monetary integration figures as an additional...

We advocate the use of absolute moment ratio statistics in conjunction with standard variance ratio statistics in order to disentangle linear dependence, non-linear dependence, and leptokurtosis in financial time series. Both statistics are computed for multiple return horizons simultaneously,...

There is a widely held view that existing differences in the capital and money market structures across EMU countries are an important matter of concern for the ECB, because they might hinder the uniform transmission of monetary policy actions. We argue that many aspects of financial structure...

Large data sets in finance with millions of observations have become widely available. Such data sets enable the construction of reliable semi-parametric estimates of the risk associated with extreme price movements. Our approach is based on semi-parametric statistical extreme value analysis,...

Economic problems such as large claims analysis in insurance and value-at-risk in finance, require assessment of the probability P of extreme realizations Q. This paper provided a semi-parametric method for estimation of extreme (P, Q) combinations for data with heavy tails. We solve the long...