Market option prices in last 20 years confirmed deviations from the Black and Scholes (BS) models assumptions, especially on the BS implied volatility. Implied binomialtrees (IBT) models capture the variations of the implied volatility known as \volatility smile". They provide a discrete...

This article provides a comprehensive econometric analysis of factors driving aggregate mortality rates over time. It differs from previous studies in this field by simultaneously considering an extensive set of macroeconomic, socio-economic and ecological factors as explanatory variables....

A large body of literature explains the inferior position of unskilled workersby imposing a structural shift in the labor force skill composition. This papertakes a different approach by emphasizing the connection between cyclicalvariations in skilled and unskilled labor markets. Using a...

I explore the implications of the lumpy labor adjustment as a propagation mechanism for aggregate dynamics. The model I use nests the basic RBC model with a staggeredjob-turnover in the spirit of Taylor (1980) and Calvo (1983). It extends this approach by introducing a Weibull-distributed labor...

We use a Bayesian dynamic factor model to measure Germanys pre WorldWar I economic activity. The procedure makes better use of existing time seriesdata than historical national accounting. To investigate industrializationwe propose to look at comovement between sectors. We find that...

In the ideal Black-Scholes world, financial time series are assumed 1) stationary (time homogeneous) and 2) having conditionally normal distribution given the past. These two assumptions have been widely-used in many methods such as the RiskMetrics, one risk management method considered as...

A new algorithm for finding value functions of finite horizon optimal stopping problems in one-dimensional diffusion models is presented. It is based on a time discretization of the corresponding integral equation. The proposed iterative procedure for solving the discretized integral equation...

This paper discusses the paper "The Source of Historical Economic Fluctuations: An Analysis using Long-Run Restrictions" by Neville Francis and Valerie A. Ramey. It argues that these authors have made great progress both in the precise measurement of labor input as well as determining the effect...

The paper develops a non-parametric, non-stationary framework for business-cycle dating based on an innovative statistical methodology known as Adaptive Weights Smoothing (AWS). The methodology is used both for the study of the individual macroeconomic time series relevant to the dating of the...

This paper examines the comovement of the stock market and of real activity inGermany before World War I under the efficient market hypothesis. We employ multivariate spectral analysis to compare rivaling national product estimates to stock market behavior in the frequency domain. Close...