The way in which market participants form expectations affects the dynamic properties of financial asset prices and therefore the appropriateness of different econometric tools used for empirical asset pricing. In addition to standard rational expectations models, this thesis studies a class of...

We propose the Volume Coefficient of Variation (VCV), the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean of trading volume, as a new and easily computable measure of information asymmetry in security markets. We use a simple microstructure model to demonstrate that VCV is strictly increasing in the...

The way in which market participants form expectations affects the dynamic properties of financial asset prices and therefore the appropriateness of different econometric tools used for empirical asset pricing. In addition to standard rational expectations models, this thesis studies a class of...

We estimate a panel vector autoregressive model to analyze the highly disputed relationship between debt and growth. Using data on 20 developed countries, we find no evidence for a robust effect on debt to growth, even for higher levels of sovereign debt. We do find a significant negative...

The VAR approach for testing present value models is applied to a nonlinear asset pricing model with three types of agents, using historical US stock prices and dividends. Besides rational long-term investors, that value assets according to expected dividends, the model includes rational and...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>Lanne and Saikkonen [Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics (2011a) Vol. 73, pp. 581–592], show that the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator is inconsistent, when the instruments are lags of variables that admit a non-causal autoregressive...</p>

We estimate panel vector autoregressions to analyze the highly disputed relationship between sovereign debt and economic growth. Using data on 20 developed countries, we find no evidence for a robust effect of debt on growth, even for higher levels of debt. We do find a significant negative...

This paper applies a heterogeneous agent asset pricing model, featuring fundamentalists and chartists, to the price-dividend and price-earnings ratios of the S&P500 index. Agents update their beliefs according to macroeconomic information, as an alternative to evolutionary dynamics. For...

There is hope for the generalized method of moments (GMM). Lanne and Saikkonen (2011) show that the GMM estimator is inconsistent, when the instruments are lags of noncausal variables. This paper argues that this inconsistency depends on distributional assumptions, that do not always hold. In...