We propose a model to study economic convergence in the tradition of neoclassical growth theory. We employ a novel stochastic set-up of the Solow (1956) model with shocks to both capital and labor. Our novel approach identifies the speed of convergence directly from estimating the parameters...

We study the impact of private information on volatility. We develop a comprehensive framework to investigate this link while controlling for the effects of both public information (such as macroeconomic news releases) and private information on prices and the effect of public information on...

We consider the dynamic factor model and show how smoothness restrictions can be imposed on the factor loadings. Cubic spline functions are used to introduce smoothness in factor loadings. We develop statistical procedures based on Wald, Lagrange multiplier and likelihood ratio tests for this...

We show that including financial market data at daily frequency, along with macro series at standard lower frequency, facilitates statistical inference on structural parameters in dynamic equilibrium models. Our continuous-time formulation conveniently accounts for the difference in observation...

We develop a new empirical approach to term structure analysis that allows testing for time-varying risk premia and for the absence of arbitrage opportunities based on the drift restriction within the Heath, Jarrow and Morton (1992) framework. As in the equity case, a zero intercept condition is...

The implied volatility surface is the collection of volatilities implied by option contracts for different strike prices and time-to-maturity. We study factor models to capture the dynamics of this three-dimensional implied volatility surface. Three model types are considered to examine...