Trend extraction from time series is often performed by using the filter proposed by Leser (1961), also known as the Hodrick-Prescott filter. Practical problems arise, however, if the time series contains structural breaks (as produced by German unification for German time series, for instance),...

Many empirical studies find a negative correlation between the returns on the nominal spot exchange rate and the lagged forward discount. This forward discount anomaly implies that the current forward rate is a biased predictor of the future spot rate. A large number of studies in the existing...

This work develops change-point methods for statistics of high-frequency data. The main interest is the volatility of an Itô semi-martingale, which is discretely observed over a fixed time horizon. We construct a minimax-optimal test to discriminate different smoothness classes of the...

We study two types of testing problems in a nonparametric additive model setting: We develop methods to test (i) whether an additive component function has a given parametric form and (ii) whether an additive component has a structural break. We apply the theory to a nonparametric extension of...

Argentina is the only country in the world that was developed in 1900 and developing in 2000. Although there is widespread consensus on the occurrence and uniqueness of this decline, an intense debate remains on its timing and underlying causes. This paper provides a first systematic...

This paper develops parameter instability and structural change tests within predictive regressions for economic systems governed by persistent vector autoregressive dynamics. Specifically, in a setting where all – or a subset – of the variables may be fractionally integrated and the...