We try and detect whether there exists a threshold level of inflation for the US economy over 1801-2013, beyond which it has a negative effect on economic growth. We use a combination of nonparametric (NP) and instrumental variable semiparametric (SNP-IV) methods to obtain inflation thresholds...

This paper investigates causality between oil prices and the prices of agricultural commodities in South Africa. We use daily data covering the period April 19, 2005 to July 31, 2014 for oil prices and the prices of soya beans, wheat, sunflower and corn. The test for Granger causality in...

The negative consequences of financial instability for the world economy during the recent financial crisis have highlighted the need for a better understanding of financial conditions. We use a financial conditions index (FCI) for South Africa previously constructed from 16 financial variables...

We compare inflation forecasts of a vector fractionally integrated autoregressive moving average (VARFIMA) model against standard forecasting models. U.S. inflation forecasts improve when controlling for persistence and economic policy uncertainty (EPU). Importantly, the VARFIMA model,...

Employing a dynamic model that captures herding under different market regimes we provide novel evidence on the herding behavior of US-listed Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). Our sample is extensive and covers the period from 2/1/2004 to 28/6/2013. Estimates of herding behavior are derived...

The conduct of inflation targeting is heavily dependent on accurate inflation forecasts. Non-linear models have increasingly featured, along with linear counterparts, in the forecasting literature. In this study, we focus on forecasting South African infl ation by means of non-linear models and...

Motivated by financial liberalization investors seek for new investment opportunities through international portfolio diversification. To this end we explore any asymmetric causal relationship between developed European stock markets (German, France and U.K) and emerging Baltic markets namely;...

One characteristic of many macroeconomic and financial time series is their asymmetric behaviour during different phases of a business cycle. Oil price shocks have been amongst those economic variables that have been identified in theoretical and empirical literature to predict the phases of...

This paper analyses the statistical properties of five major precious metal prices (gold, silver, rhodium, palladium and platinum) based the fractional integration modelling framework while identifying structural breaks. We use monthly data from 1972:1 to 2013:12. Our results indicate orders of...

In this paper we test whether the key metals prices of gold and platinum significantly improve inflation forecasts for the South African economy. We also test whether controlling for conditional correlations in a dynamic setup, using bivariate Bayesian-Dynamic Conditional Correlation (B-DCC)...