Diffuse priors lead to pathological posterior behaviour when used in Bayesian analyses of Simultaneous Equation Models (SEMs). This results from the local nonidentification of certain parameters in SEMs. When this, a priori known, feature is not captured appropriately, and a posteriori favour...

Exchange rates typically exhibit time-varying patterns in both means and variances. The histograms of such series indicate heavy tails. In this paper we construct models which enable a decision-maker to analyze the implications of such time series patterns for currency risk management. Our...

In this paper, we make use of state space models to investigate the presence of stochastic trends in economic time series. A model is specified where such a trend can enter either in the autoregressive representation or in a separate state equation. Tests based on the former are analogous to...

A key application of long memory time series models concerns inflation. Long memory implies that shocks have a long-lasting effect. It may however be that empirical evidence for long memory is caused by neglecting one or more level shifts. Since such level shifts are not unlikely for inflation,...