We estimate changes in the volatility of firm-level sales, earnings and employment growth of US firms. Our method differs from existing measures for firm-level sales and employment volatility in that it not only captures longer-run changes in volatility, but also measures cyclical changes in...

We document how firm-specific volatility in sales, earnings and employment growth evolved year by year in Japan. Our volatility measure also indicates the evolution of firm turnover. We find that patterns in firm-specific volatility have changed when macroeconomic circumstances have. Firm...

We study the estimation, the dynamics, and the predictability of option-implied risk-neutral moments (variance, skewness, and kurtosis) for individual stocks from various perspectives. We first show that it is in the estimation of the higher moments essential to use an interpolation with a...

This investigation focuses on the volatility of stock returns in the Belgian Stock Exchange from the period of April 1991 to April 2008. Empirical results have shown that there is a mean and volatility spillover effect from the big European markets. There are also mean spillover effects from the...

In the present paper the negative impact of interest rates on stock returns will be estimated for the European economies. Data are monthly during the year 2008 and cover the following countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The elaboration of...

It has been argued that keiretsu affiliation among Japanese firms gives rise to more stable management practices which result in more stable but lower average profits for member firms relative to independent firms. Using financial market performance data, such as the volatility of share prices,...

On BHPS data we measure various indices of social capital at the individual and household level, and use them as explanatory variables in standard consumption insurance tests. We find that two out of three aspects of social capital positively impact on consumption smoothing, by reducing the...

This paper provides empirical evidence regarding the causal links between macroeconomic uncertainty and output growth using Greek data. Uncertainty is considered in distinct components, namely the inflation uncertainty and the output growth uncertainty. The results reveal significant negative...

The estimation of large vector autoregressions with stochastic volatility using standard methods is computationally very demanding. In this paper we propose to model conditional volatilities as driven by a single common unobserved factor. This is justified by the observation that the pattern of...

We develop an econometric methodology for the study of the yield curve and its interactions with measures of non-standard monetary policy during possibly turbulent times. The yield curve is modeled by the dynamic Nelson-Siegel model while the monetary policy measurements are modeled as...