This paper develops theoretical results for the estimation of radial basis function neural network specifications, for dependent data, that do not require iterative estimation techniques. Use of the properties of regression based boosting algorithms is made. Both consistency and rate results are...

This paper investigates the response of US stock market uncertainty to monetary policy of the Federal Reserve Bank. It can be shown that monetary policy significantly Granger-causes stock market confidence. By using monthly closing prices of the V IX as a stock market uncertainty proxy and a...

The share of health care expenditure in GDP rises rapidly in virtually all OECD countries, causing increasing concern among politicians and the general public. Yet, economists have to date failed to reach an agreement on what the main determinants of this development are. This paper revisits...

This paper considers the question of whether changes in persistence have occurred during the long-run evolution of U.S. prices of the non-renewable energy resources crude oil, natural gas and bituminous coal. Our main contribution is to allow for a structural break when testing for a break in...

We study the empirical behaviour of semi-parametric log-periodogram estimation for long memory models when the true process exhibits a change in persistence. Simulation results confirm theoretical arguments which suggest that evidence for long memory is likely to be found. A recently proposed...

Determining good parameter estimates in ESTAR models is known to be diffcult. We show that the phenomena of getting strongly biased estimators is a consequence of the so-called identifcation problem, the problem of properly distinguishing the transition function in relation to extreme parameter...

We examine the asymptotic behavior of unit root tests against nonlinear alternatives of the exponential smooth transition type if the data is erroneously nonlinearly transformed. We show analytically and by a Monte Carlo study that the probability of rejecting the correct null of a random walk...

While it is widely agreed that Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) holds as a long-run concept the specific dynamic driving the process is largely build upon a priori economic belief rather than a thorough statistical modeling procedure. The two prevailing time series models, i.e. the exponential...

Interest in the interface of nonstationarity and nonlinearity has been increasing in the econometric literature. This paper provides a formal method of testing for nonstationary long memory against the alternative of particular forms of nonlinerarity. The nonlinear models we consider are ESTAR...

This paper tests the Purchasing Power Parity Theory of Exchange Rates dealing with Argentinean data for the period 1900-2006. This is equivalent to testing if the Real Exchange Rate is a stationary variable or if its components (the nominal exchange rate and the relative prices) are...