This paper explores the forecasting abilities of Markov-Switching models. Although MS models generally display a superior in-sample fit relative to linear models, the gain in prediction remains small. We confirm this result using simulated data for a wide range of specifications by applying...

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we develop a theoretical model to investigate the impact of political risk on irreversible investment. Second, we apply our model to an analysis of the effects of risk of separation of the province of Quebec from the Canadian federation. We model...

This paper tests directly a geography and growth model using regional data for Europe, the US, and Japan during di®erent time periods. We set up a standard geography and growth model with a poverty trap and derive a log- linearized growth equation that corresponds directly to a threshold...

The incentive to renege on a commitment to a fixed exchange rate is shown to be state contingent. A fixed exchange rate policy is not viable under “unusual†circumstances, and the incentive to violate the commitment is larger in the case of contractionary shocks than in the case of...

This paper discusses inference in self exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) models. Of main interest is inference for the threshold parameter. It is well-known that the asymptotics of the corresponding estimator depend upon whether the SETAR model is continuous or not. In the continuous...

Expectations of the future play a key role in the transmission of monetary policy. Over recent years, a lot of theoretical and applied macroeconomic research has been based on the assumption of rational expectations. However, estimated models based on this assumption typically fail to capture...

Using a Switching Regime ARCH (SWARCH) model and other time series models, this paper sets out to investigate the volatility of Taiwan's monthly stock market returns, with the empirical results demonstrating that our SWARCH-L specification offers a better statistical fit to this leading stock...

The analysis of price transmission between raw and processed agricultural products in transition countries is complicated by the frequently changing conditions on their way from plan to market. We utilise a Markov-switching vector error correction model to allow for multiple regime shifts in the...

The incentive to renege on a commitment to a fixed exchange rate is shown to be state contingent. A fixed exchange rate policy is not viable under `unusual' circumstances, and the incentive to violate the commitment is larger in the case of contractionary shocks than in the case of expansionary...