We study the interest rate spread of the Argentine financial system during the last eighteen years. We analyze Granger causality of selected variables, and estimate econometric models that relate spread to macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. Resuls indicate that output growth and...

In this paper, we analyse the heavy-tailed behaviour in the dynamics of housing-price returns in the United States. We investigate the sources of heavy tails by estimating autoregressive models in which innovations can be subject to GARCH effects and/or non-Gaussianity. Using monthly data...

This paper proposes a robust approach to hedging and pricing in the presence of market imperfections such as market incompleteness and frictions. The generality of this framework allows us to conduct an in-depth theoretical analysis of hedging strategies for a wide family of risk measures and...

Recently a market in options based on CPI inflation (inflation caps and floors) has emerged in the US. This paper uses quotes on these derivatives to construct probability densities for inflation. We study how these pdfs respond to news announcements, and find that the implied odds of deflation...

This paper proposes a new regression model - a smooth transition mixed data sampling (STMIDAS) approach - that captures recurrent changes in the ability of a high frequency variable in predicting a low frequency variable. The STMIDAS regression is employed for testing changes in the ability of...

We study how total factor productivity (TFP), energy prices, and the Great Moderation are linked. First we estimate a joint stochastic process for the energy price and TFP and establish that until the second quarter of 1982, energy prices negatively affected productivity. This spillover has...

It is standard to model the output-inflation trade-off as a linear relationship with a time-invariant slope. We assess empirical evidence for three types of nonlinearity in the short-run Phillips curve. At an empirical level, we aim to discover why large negative output gaps in Japan during the...

Markov models introduce persistence in the mixture distribution. In time series analysis, the mixture components relate to different persistent states characterizing the state-specific time series process. Model specification is discussed in a general form. Emphasis is put on the functional form...

Many empirical studies have found that interest rate have a positive effect on the price level. This paper pursues an obvious, but neglected explanation: interest payments are a cost of production that is at least in part passed on to costumers. A model shows that the cost-push effect of...