It is widely accepted that the distribution of financial returns has heavy tails. In this context it is important to understand the frequency and importance of extreme events in financial markets. Extreme Value Theory is the appropriate framework for studying the tail behaviour of a...

We build a new asset pricing framework to study the effects of aggregate illiquidity on asset prices, volatilities and correlations. In our framework the Black-Scholes economy is obtained as the limiting case of perfectly liquid markets. The model is consistent with empirical studies on the...

This research aims to develop a valuation technique for constant maturity swaps (CMS) based on convexity corrections. We explicitly incorporates into our valuation model both 1) complex shift patterns of the yield curve and 2) implied volatility smile and skew effects. The method requires...

Survey data on agent expectations appear to experience inertia, remaining relatively stable for protracted periods punctuated with the occasional structural shift initiated by exogenous changes. The data is also characterised with an underlying level of volatility which varies over time. This...

In this paper we show that a model featuring durables consumption, weak credibility, and sticky prices can explain many of the stylized facts associated with exchange-rate-based stabilization, including the quantitative variation exhibited by key macroeconomic variables. In standard models, the...

We describe the methods we employ for the generation of possible scenarios of the term structure evolution. The problem is originated by the request of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance of finding an optimal strategy for the issuance of Public Debt securities. The basic idea is to...

This paper is a step towards the econometric foundation of computational intelligence in finance. Financial time series modeling and forecasting are addressed with an artificial neural network, examining issues of its topology dependency. Structural dependency of results is viewed not as a...

In the last 20 years the U.S. economy has experienced a strong reduction in the volatility of GDP growth. By some measures it has declined nearly by half. This paper identifies, documents and models the rapid growth of multinational corporations as a source of gradual decline in output and...

Grandmont (1985) found that the parameter space of even the simplest, most classical models are stratified into bifurcation regions. Barnett and He (1999,2002) subsequently found transcritical, codimension-two, and Hopf bifurcation boundaries within the parameter space of the policy-relevant...

Following the lead of Merton (1974), recent research has focused on the relationship of credit risk to firm value. Although this has usually been done for a single firm, the growth of structured finance, which necessarily involves the correlation between included securities, has spurred interest...