GARCH models are commonly used as latent processes in econometrics, financial economics and macroeconomics. Yet no exact likelihood analysis of these models has been provided so far. In this paper we outline the issues and suggest a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm which allows the calculation...

China's thirteen years of economic reforms (1979-1991) have achieved an average GNP annual growth rate of 8.6%. What makes China's reforms differ from those of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is the sustained entry and expansion of the non-state sector. We argue that the organization...

The pressures of economic crisis and reform that have gripped African societies have been accompanied by a proliferation of new religious movements. Amid concerns about the political impact of religious revivalism, little attention has been devoted to their economic implications. Focusing on the...

In this paper it is shown that the most rational of all creatures, Homo Oeconomicus, can be enticed to freely engage in an activity that is guaranteed to lead to his ruin. It is furthermore shown that this is possible if and only if utility functions are unbounded. The paper thus develops an...

This paper explores the sources of uncertainty that cause firms to revise their capital investment plans and the stock market to revise its valuation of those firms. A simple method is developed to decompose the uncertainty governing revisions in investment plans and the stock market rate of...

The reinsurance market is the secondary market for insurance risks. It has a very specific organization. Direct insurers do not trade risks with each other. They cede part of their primarily underwritten portfolios mainly to professional reinsurers with no direct business. This paper offers a...

We examine how liquidity and asset prices are affected by the following market imperfections: asymmetric information, participation costs, transaction costs, leverage constraints, non-competitive behavior and search. Our model has three periods: agents are identical in the first, become...

Liquidity, defined as the ease with which an asset may be marketed, has a self-fulfilling dimension. If investors in the primary market for a new asset fear an illiquid secondary market, the issuance does not take off, thereby vindicating the initial concern about an illiquid secondary market....

This paper investigates the estimation of long-term VaR. It also suggests a simple approach to the estimation of long-term VaR that avoids problems associated with the square-root rule for extrapolating VaR, as well as those associated with attempts to extrapolate day-to-day volatility forecasts...