We study the behavior and interaction of systematic and idiosyncratic components of risk in a cross-section of U.K. stocks. We find no clear evidence of a trend in any component of total risk, but we document different “regimes” in the behavior of each component of total risk, in their...

I describe preliminary results for seasonal decomposition procedure using a modified Hodrick-Prescott (Leser) filter. The procedure is simpler to implement compared to two currently most popular seasonal decomposition procedures - X-11 filters developed by the U.S. Census Bureau and SEATS...

In studying the scale invariance of an empirical time series a twofold problem arises: it is necessary to test the series for self-similarity and, once passed such a test, the goal becomes to estimate the parameter H0 of self-similarity. The estimation is therefore correct only if the sequence...

The paper establishes the conditions under which the generalised least squares estimator of the regression parameters is equivalent to the weighted least squares estimator. The equivalence conditions have interesting applications in local polynomial regression and kernel smoothing. Specifically,...

The variance profile is defined as the power mean of the spectral density function of a stationary stochastic process. It is a continuous and non-decreasing function of the power parameter, p, which returns the minimum of the spectrum (p → −∞), the interpolation error variance (harmonic...

This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

This is an exploratory study that attempts to identify and provide empirical evidence on the possible determinants of the market capitalisation of the Harare Stock Exchange (HSE) with the view of understanding the development prospects of the HSE and other similar markets. The study used...

We consider a situation where the relatively ‘poor’ are concerned about their relative income status with respect to a relevant reference group. Such a concern is explicitly introduced in a utility function to study the consumption and saving behavior of the poor in terms of a static and...