In Italy, in July 2003, a new highway code came into force. Among other things, it posits a «revolutionary » point-system driving licence. This paper analyses optimal punishment schemes and shows that a simpler policy intervention, such as a dynamic increase in the size of the pecuniary...

In this paper we propose a generalisation of the noise trader transmission mechanism to examine the impact of central bank intervention on exchange rates. Within a heterogeneous expectations exchange rate model intervention operations are supposed to provide support to either chartist or...

Interest rate rules for monetary policy and tax rules for fiscal policy change stochastically between two regimes. In the first regime monetary policy follows the Taylor principle and taxes rise strongly with increases in the real value of government debt; in the second regime the Taylor...

Once you allow for persistence in macroeconomic variables, two aspects of exchange rate credibility emerge whose relative importance can vary over time. Hence, the effect of policy measures on interest rate differentials becomes ambiguous. In this paper, a Markov-switching VAR that allows for...

This paper argues that the linear price- dividend relationship as predicted in the Gordon (1962) model breaks down in regimes of high inflation and deflation. Using data for the US and the UK over the period from 1871 to 2002, nonlinear estimates support the prediction of the model.

In order to capture observed asymmetric dependence in international financial returns, we construct a multivariate regime-switching model of copulas. We model dependence with one Gaussian and one canonical vine copula regime. Canonical vines are constructed from bivariate conditional copulas and...

The aim of this article is to answer the following question: can the considerable rise in the volatility of the LAC stock markets in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 crisis be explained by the worsening financial environment in the US markets? To this end, we rely on a timevarying transition...

We calibrate Markov regime-switching (MRS) models to mean daily spot prices from the EEX market. Our empirical study shows that (i) models with shifted spike regime distributions lead to more realistic models of electricity spot prices and that (ii) introducing heteroskedasticity in the base...

In this paper we show how the latent Markov model can be used to define different conditions in the stock market, called market- regimes. Changes in regimes can be used to detect financial crises, pinpoint the end of a crisis and predict future developments in the stock market, to some degree....