By distinguishing between discretionary and non-discretionary fiscal policy, this paper analyses the stability of fiscal rules for EMU countries before and after the Maastricht Treaty. Using both Instrumental Variables and GMM techniques, it turns out that discretionary fiscal policy remains...

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new measure of contagion. Our approach to testing contagion is based on the frequency analysis of causality developed recently by Breitung and Candelon (2004). This approach handles, in a unified framework, several of the statistical problems identified...

This paper proposes a new approach based on time-varying copulas to test for the presence of increases in stock market interdependence after financial crises, also known as shift-contagion process. We show that the previous approaches that take into account changes in volatility regimes are...

By distinguishing between discretionary and non-discretionary fiscal policy, this paper analyses the stability of fiscal rules for EMU countries before and after the Maastricht Treaty. Using both Instrumental Variables and GMM techniques, it turns out that discretionary fiscal policy has...

In this paper we consider the hypothesis that particular short-run co-movements indicationg that shocks have similar responses might only exist for a particular regime and not for the whole sample. A two-step procedure is set up to test and estimate the multi-regime common cyclical feature. This...

This paper contributes to the econometric literature on structural breaks by proposing a test for parameter stability in VAR models at a particular frequency 'omega', where 'omega is an element of [0, pi]'.When a dynamic model is affected by a structural break, the new tests allow for detecting...

We show that, complementary to trade and financial linkages, the strength of the bankingsector helps explain the transmission of currency crises. Specifically, we demonstrate thatthe Mexican, Thai, and Russian crises predominantly spread to countries with weaknesses intheir banking sectors. At...

This paper proposes a new duration-based backtesting procedure for VaR forecasts. The GMM test framework proposed by Bontemps (2006) to test for the distributional assumption (i.e., the geometric distribution) is applied to the case of VaR forecast validity. Using simple J-statistics based on...

This paper investigates the comovement of long-term government bond yields in the Eurozone. Themethods used for identifying common trends and common cycles are cointegration and SCCF (serialcorrelation common feature). These low and high frequency comovement analyses based on asymptoticcritical...

This paper proposes a new statistical framework originating from the traditional credit-scoring literature, to evaluate currency crises Early Warning Systems (EWS). Based on an assessment of the predictive power of panel logit and Markov frameworks, the panel logit model is outperforming the...