In deciding the monetary policy stance, central bankers need to evaluate carefully the risks the current economic situation poses to price stability. We propose to regard the central banker as a risk manager who aims to contain inflation within pre-specified bounds. We develop formal tools of...

The main objective of this paper is to survey and evaluate the performance of the most popular univariate VaR methodologies, paying particular attention to their underlying assumptions and to their logical flaws. In the process, we show that the Historical Simulation method and its variants can...

This paper develops a new econometric framework to model duration, volume and volatility simultaneously. We obtain an econometric reduced form that incorporates causal and feedback effects among these variables. We construct impulse-response functions that show how the system reacts to a...

The extension of GARCH models to the multivariate setting has been fraught with difficulties. In this paper, we suggest to work with univariate portfolio GARCH models. We show how the multivariate dimension of the portfolio allocation problem may be recovered from the univariate approach. The...

Four years after the introduction of the euro, this paper provides an overview of the current structure and integration of the euro area financial systems and related policy initiatives. We first compare the euro area financial structure with that of the United States and Japan. Using new and...

This paper develops a rigorous econometric framework to investigate the structure of codependence between random variables and to test whether it changes over time. Our approach is based on the computation - over both a test and a benchmark period - of the conditional probability that a random...

This paper argues that forecast estimators should minimise the loss function in a statistical, rather than deterministic, way. We introduce two new elements into the classical econometric analysis: a subjective guess on the variable to be forecasted and a probability reflecting the confidence...

We assess whether the euro had an impact first on the degree of integration of European financial markets, and, second, on the euro area term structure. We propose two methodologies to measure integration: one relies on time-varying GARCH correlations, and the other one on a regression...

This study assesses the degree of financial integration for a selected number of new EU member states between themselves and with the euro zone. Within the framework of a factor model for market returns, we measure integration as the amount of variance explained by the common factor relative to...

This paper shows how the problem of mean-downside risk portfolio allocation can be cast in terms of penalized least squares (PLS). The penalty is given by a power function of the returns below a certain threshold. We derive the asymptotic properties of the PLS estimator, allowing for possible...