This paper considers the issue of testing for symmetry of the business cycle. It is demonstrated that findings of symmetry should be interpreted with caution since tests tend to have low power to detect asymmetries when applied to data that have been filtered to isolate their stationary...

We examine several discrete-time versions of the Cox, Ingersoll and Ross (CIR) model for the term structure, in which the short rate is subject to discrete shifts. Our empirical analysis suggests that careful consideration of which parameters of the short-term interest rate equation that are...

This paper develops a model for the forward and spot exchange rate which allows for the presence of a Markov switching risk premium in the forward market and considers the issue of testing the unbiased forward exchange rate (UFER) hypothesis. Using US|UK data, it is shown that the UFER...

This paper proposes a method to asses the potential problems of sustainability of a country’s sovereign debt. We claim that the relevant variables used for this analysis are typically subject to changes which are associated with changes in macroeconomics policies. We propose a procedure for...

The purpose of this work is to investigate the efficiency of the current Euro spot and current forward exchange rates. Within the past three decades there have been large movements in the exchange rate markets and often these movements were not related with the changes in the “fundamentals”...

Considerable attention has been directed in the recent finance and economics literature to issues concerning the effects on company failure risk of changes in the macroeconomic environment. This paper examines the accounting ratio-based and macroeconomic determinants of insolvency exit of UK...

This paper addresses the problem of testing for the presence of a stochastic bubble in a time series in the case that the bubble is periodically collapsing so that the asset price keeps returning to the level implied by the market fundamentals. As this is essentially a problem of identifying the...