Market growth is driven by product innovation. Beyond functional satiationthe marginal utility of product performance and variety decreases. We argue that socialcomparisons underlying innovation diffusion results in consumer motivations for upwardassimilation toward the behavior of better...

We propose a general class of Markov-switching-ARFIMA processes in order to combine strands of long memory and Markov-switching literature. Although the coverage of this class of models is broad, we show that these models can be easily estimated with the DLV algorithm proposed. This algorithm...

We implement a long-horizon static and dynamic portfolio allocation involvinga risk-free and a risky asset. This model is calibrated at a quarterly frequencyfor ten European countries. We also use maximum-likelihood estimates andBayesian estimates to account for parameter uncertainty. We nd that...

This paper offers a new method for estimation and forecasting of the linear and nonlinear time series when the stationarity assumption is violated. Our general local parametric approach particularly applies to general varying-coefficient parametric models, such as AR or GARCH, whose coefficients...

A new test for constant correlation is proposed. Based on the bivariate Student-t distribution, this test is derived as Lagrange multiplier (LM) test. Whereas most of the traditional tests (e.g. Jennrich, 1970, Tang, 1995 and Goetzmann, Li & Rouwenhorst, 2005) specify the unknown correlations as...

This paper applies a non- and a semiparametric copula-based approach to analyze the first-order autocorrelation of returns in high frequency financial time series. Using the EUREX D3047 tick data from the German stock index, it can be shown that the temporal dependence structure of price...

It is investigated whether Euro-area variables can be forecast better based on synthetic time series for the pre-Euro period or by using just data from Germany for the pre-Euro period. Our forecast comparison is based on quarterly data for the period 1970Q1 - 2003Q4 for ten macroeconomic...

This paper is an exercise in dating the Euro area business cycle on a monthly basis. Using a quite flexible interpolation routine, we construct several monthly series of Euro area real GDP, and then apply the Bry-Boschan (1971) procedure. To account for the asymmetry in growth regimes and...

In this paper, we review the most common specifications of discrete-time stochasticvolatility (SV) models and illustrate the major principles of corresponding MarkovChain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based statistical inference. We provide a hands-on approachwhich is easily implemented in empirical...