The higher our aspirations, the higher the probability that we have to adjust them downwards when forming more realistic expectations later on. This paper shows that the costs induced by high aspirations are not trivial. We first develop a theoretical framework to identify the factors that...

Empirical studies have shown that a large number of financial asset returns exhibit fat tails and are often characterized by volatility clustering and asymmetry. Also revealed as a stylized fact is Long memory or long range dependence in market volatility, with significant impact on pricing and...

In the era of Basel II a powerful tool for bankruptcy prognosis isvital for banks. The tool must be precise but also easily adaptable tothe bank's objections regarding the relation of false acceptances (TypeI error) and false rejections (Type II error). We explore the suitabil-ity of Smooth...

This paper offers a new method for estimation and forecasting of the linear and nonlinear time series when the stationarity assumption is violated. Our general local parametric approach particularly applies to general varying-coefficient parametric models, such as AR or GARCH, whose coefficients...

A solution method is derived in this paper for solving a system of linear rationalexpectations equation with lagged expectations (e.g., models incorporating sticky information) using the method of undetermined coefficients for the infinite MA representation. The method applies a combination of a...

We consider the problem of estimating the conditional quantile of a time series at time t given observations of the same and perhaps other time series availableat time t − 1. We discuss sieve estimates which are a nonparametric versions ofthe Koenker-Bassett regression quantiles and do not...

Let W denote a family of probability distributions with parameter space t, and WG be a subfamily of W depending on a mapping G : O -- t. Extremum estimations of the parameter vector v e O are considered. Some sufficient conditions are presented to ensure the uniqueness with probability one. As...

Over recent years, study on risk management has been prompted by the Basel committee for regular banking supervisory. There are however limitations of some widely-used risk management methods that either calculate risk measures under the Gaussian distributional assumption or involve numerical...

Measuring dependence in a multivariate time series is tantamount to modelling its dynamic structure in space and time. In the context of a multivariate normally distributed time series, the evolution of the covariance (or correlation) matrix over time describes this dynamic. A wide variety of...

A test for the cointegrating rank of a vector autoregressive (VAR) process with a possible shift and broken linear trend is proposed. The break point is assumed to be known. The setup is a VAR process for cointegrated variables. The tests are not likelihood ratio tests but the deterministic...