The ex-ante forecast of the SP500 index discussed in Fantazzini (2010a), covering the time sample 14/04/2009 - 09/10/2010, and originally submitted to the Economics Bulletin on the 15/05/2009 is analyzed. It is found that the realized values of the SP500 index trailed the forecasted values quite...

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 then analyze the...

This article contains the second part of the consultation series on copula functions and their use in modeling multidimensional probability distributions. It describes pair-copula functions (including the concept of canonical and D-vines), alternative measures of dependence useful to summarize...

The Deepwater Horizon incident demonstrated that most of the oil left is deep offshore or in other difficult to reach locations. Moreover, obtaining the oil remaining in currently producing reservoirs requires additional equipment and technology that comes at a higher price in both capital and...

A spatial model of voting in parliamentary elections is estimated by using survey data from The Netherlands, Great Brit-ain, and Israel. It is shown that more educated voters put more weight on the parties’ political programs. The choice of less educated voters depends primarily on their...

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 has begun in July 2007 when a loss of confidence by investors in the value of securitized mortgages in the United States resulted in a liquidity crisis. World stock markets peaked in October 2007 and then entered a period of high volatility which culminated with...

The final part of the consultation series on copula functions is devoted to the description of copula selection methods to choose the copula model that provides the best fit for the empirical data at hand, as well as to the description of copula evaluation methods by using goodness-of-fit tests.

This paper investigates the relationship between the bitcoin price and the hashrate by disentangling the effects of the energy efficiency of the bitcoin mining equipment, bitcoin halving, and of structural breaks on the price dynamics. For this purpose, we propose a methodology based on...