Based on a structural VAR and a dynamic general equilibrium model, we provide evidence of the changes in the monetary transmission mechanism (MTM) in the European Monetary Union after the adoption of the common currency in 1999. The estimation of a Bayesian VAR over the periods before and after...

The paper compares the main monetary policy strategies to assess which one is the best performing in terms of both minimising the volatility of inflation and the output-gap and reducing the probability of falling into a liquidity trap. The strategies differ in the degree of history dependence...

This paper assesses the macroeconomic consequences of a prolonged period of low and falling inflation when monetary policy is constrained by the zero lower bound (ZLB) on short-term nominal interest rates, the private sector is indebted in nominal terms (debt deflation mechanism) and nominal...

Most of the important models in finance rest on the assumption that randomness is explained through a normal random variable because, in general, the use of alternative models is obstructed by the difficulty of calibrating and simulating them. In this paper, we empirically study models for...

In this paper we conduct an empirical analysis of daily log-returns of Italian open-end mutual funds and their respective benchmarks in the period from February 2007 to June 2013. First, we estimate the classical normal-based model on the log-returns of a large set of funds. Then we compare it...

In this paper we consider several time-varying volatility and/or heavy-tailed models to explain the dynamics of return time series and to fit the volatility smile for exchange-traded options where the underlying is the main ‘Borsa Italiana' stock index. Given observed prices for the time...

We study the one-dimensional Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) processes with marginal law given by the tempered stable and tempered infinitely divisible distributions proposed by Rosinski (2007) and Bianchi et al. (2010b), respectively. In general, the use of non-Gaussian OU processes is impeded by...

The ratio between current earnings per share and share price (the EP ratio) is widely considered to be an effective gauge of under/over-valuation of a corporation's stock. Arguably, a more reliable indicator (the cyclically-adjusted EP ratio) can be obtained by replacing current earnings with a...

When the riskiness of an asset increases, then, arguably, some risk-averse agents that were previously willing to hold on to the asset are no longer willing to do so. Aumann and Serrano (2008) have recently proposed an index of riskiness that helps to make this intuition rigorous. We use their...

The aim of the paper is to estimate a reliable quarterly time-series of potential output for the Italian economy, exploiting four alternative approaches: a Bayesian unobserved component method, a univariate time-varying autoregressive model, a production function approach and a structural VAR....