This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

This paper estimates the long memory volatility model for 16 agricultural commodity futures returns from different futures markets, namely corn, oats, soybeans, soybean meal, soybean oil, wheat, live cattle, cattle feeder, pork, cocoa, coffee, cotton, orange juice, Kansas City wheat, rubber, and...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the existence and nature of seasonality (deterministic or stochastic) in tanker freight markets and measure and compare it across sub-sectors and under different market conditions (expansionary and contractionary) for the period January 1978 to December...

This paper investigates the nature of seasonality (determistic and/or stochastic) in dry bulk breight rates, and measures and compares it across freight rates of different vessel sizes (Carpesize, Panamax and Handysize), contract duration (spot, 1-year and 3-year time charters) and market...

In this paper we study how 103 bilateral Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) shape bilateral trade flows over time. The analysis of quarterly trade flows from 1982 Q4 to 2018 Q4 shows dynamic differences between RTAs and among trading partners. Results show that countries benefit unevenly from...

This paper uses three types of analysis to investigate the drivers of energy productivity changes occurring in 39 countries during 1995-2009. We find that increases in sectoral energy productivity were the primary driver behind economy-wide energy productivity improvements between 1995 and 2009....

We develop a new targeted maximum likelihood estimation method that provides improved forecasting for misspecified linear autoregressive models. The method weighs data points in the observed sample and is useful in the presence of data generating processes featuring structural breaks, complex...

The recent global financial crisis has taught us one tough and important lesson that, there is a pressing need for containing the systemic risk in the financial system. However, prior to containing this risk and form the regulations we need to measure this risk properly. This research has...

In this paper we use a test developed by Phillips et al. (2011) to identify a bubble in the gold market. We find that the price of gold followed an explosive price process between 2002 and 2012 interrupted only briefly by the subprime crisis in 2008. We also provide a theoretical foundation for...

This paper suggests that there was a negative bubble in oil prices in 2014/15, which decreased them beyond the level justified by economic fundamentals. This proposition is corroborated by two sets of bubble detection strategies: the first set consists of tests for financial bubbles, while the...