It is now an accepted fact that the majority of financial markets worldwide are neither normal nor constant, and South Africa is no exception. One idea that can be used to understand such markets and has been gaining popularity recently is that of regimes and regime-switching models. In this...

[Update: Within four weeks of the original publication of this research report, Risk Magazine reported in its 28th February 2012 issue story titled 'Goodbye VaR? Basel to Consider Other Risk Metrics': "A review of trading book capital rules, due to be launched in March by the Basel Committee on...

We review, under a historical perspective, the developement of the problem of non-fundamentalness of Moving Average (MA) representations of economic models, starting from the work by Hansen and Sargent [1980]. Nonfundamentalness typically arises when agents' information space is larger than the...

We study the relationship between VARMA and factor representations of a vector stochastic process. We observe that, in general, vector time series and factors cannot both follow finite-order VAR models. Instead, a VAR factor dynamics induces a VARMA process, while a VAR process entails VARMA...

An explication of the key ideas behind the Cointegrated Vector Autoregression Approach. The CVAR approach is related to Haavelmo's famous quot;Probability Approach in Econometricsquot; (1944). It insists on careful stochastic specification as a necessary groundwork for econometric inference and...

We review, under a historical perspective, the development of the problem of nonfundamentalness of Moving Average (MA) representations of economic models. Nonfundamentalness typically arises when agents' information space is larger than the econometrician's one. Therefore it is impossible for...

This paper reviews Bayesian methods that have been developed in recent years to estimate and evaluate dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. We consider the estimation of linearized DSGE models, the evaluation of models based on Bayesian model checking, posterior odds comparisons,...

I estimate DSGE models with recurring regime changes in monetary policy (inflation target and reaction coefficients), technology (growth rate and volatility), and/or nominal price rigidities. In the models, agents are assumed to know deep parameter values but make probabilistic inference about...

This survey paper discusses the Cointegrated Vector AutoRegressive (CVAR) methodology and how it has evolved over the past 30 years. It describes major steps in the econometric development, discusses problems to be solved when confronting theory with the data, and, as a solution, proposes a...

We estimated a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model describing the links between a banking sector and a real economy. We proposed a new method to verify robustness of impulse-response functions in a SVAR model. This method applies permutations of the variable ordering in a structural...