This paper studies multiscale stochastic volatility models of financial asset returns. It specifies two components in the log-volatility process and allows for leverage/asymmetric effects from both components while return innovation terms follow a heavy/fat tailed Student t distribution. The two...

This study investigates the implications of firm's demand for real balances from the production and monetary economics perspective. Money is a component of production as a factor increasing efficiency in exchange in input markets. Firms may improve efficiency in production by holding real money...

This dissertation examines the role of bank structure on the effectiveness of monetary policy. Using time series data for U.S. banks, I examine the varying effect of monetary policy on bank lending for the period 1976-2003. It is found that as the banking industry gets more concentrated (through...

Measuring risk is a crucial aspect of the portfolio optimization problem in finance, and of capital adequacy assessment in risk management. Expected Shortfall (ES) has been proposed as a coherent risk measure, by contrast with Value-at-Risk (VaR) and the standard-deviation-type of measures....

Diffusion modeling of commodity price behavior is important for commodity risk management. This research seeks to improve upon the existing commodity diffusion models by incorporating stochastic volatility and seasonality through the affine diffusion framework. In particular, it evaluates affine...

This dissertation investigates the properties of macroeconomic fluctuations in a small open economy under the presence of sovereign default risk. International borrowing and lending arise from the interaction between a risk averse sovereign representative agent in a small open economy trying to...

The purpose of this research has been to look into several econometric issues of concern to researchers doing applied work in macroeconomics. The first essay looks at Bureau of Economic Analysis data on inventories and sales of finished goods often used in studies of inventory behavior. Applying...