The ability of Google Trends data to forecast the number of new daily cases and deaths of COVID-19 is examined using a dataset of 158 countries. The analysis includes the computations of lag correlations between confirmed cases and Google data, Granger causality tests, and an out-of-sample...

Sergey Aivazian was the head of my department at the Moscow School of Economics, but he was much more than that. He played an important role in my life, and he contributed to my studies devoted to copula modelling. This small memoir reports how this amazingly polite and smart scientist helped me...

New models to forecast the real price of oil on the basis of macroeconomic indicators and Google search data are proposed. A large-scale out-of-sample forecasting analysis comparing the different models is performed. It is found that models including both Google data and macroeconomic aggregates...

This paper suggests that there was a negative bubble in oil prices in 2014/15, which decreased them beyond the level justified by economic fundamentals. This proposition is corroborated by two sets of bubble detection strategies: the first set consists of tests for financial bubbles, while the...

Bitcoin is an open source decentralized digital currency and a payment system. It has raised a lot of attention and interest worldwide and an increasing number of articles are devoted to its operation, economics and financial viability. This article reviews the econometric and mathematical tools...

We propose the use of Google online search data for nowcasting and forecasting the number of food stamps recipients. We perform a large out-of-sample forecasting exercise with almost 3000 competing models with forecast horizons up to 2 years ahead, and we show that models including Google search...

Using monthly data of 79 Russian regions from 2003 to 2017, we study the long-run relationship of the retail gasoline prices with the crude oil price and the nominal exchange rate. We find that models that were successfully applied to deal with asymmetries in other countries are not suitable for...

The increase of oil and natural gas prices since the year 2000 stimulated the planning and construction of new coal-fired electricity generating plants and coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants in the US. However, many of these projects have been canceled or abandoned since 2007. Using a set of 145...

English Abstract: This paper reviews the theory of Credit Default Swaps (CDS), the main characteristics of the CDS market, and how to estimate the non-default component of the yield spreads as the basis between the actual CDS premium and the hypothetical CDS premium implied by bond yields. We...

The aggregation of event types (ETs) is a crucial step for operational risk management techniques. Basel II requires the computation of a 99.9% VaR for each ET, and their aggregation via a simple sum if the dependence among ETs is not specified. Such a procedure assumes perfect positive...