This study aims to describe the size distribution of Portuguese firms, as measured by annual sales and total assets, between 2006 and 2012, giving an economic interpretation for the evolution of the distribution along the time. Three distributions are fitted to data: the lognormal, the Pareto...

Parameter uncertainty has been a recurrent subject treated in the financial literature. The normative portfolio selection approach considers two main kinds of decision rules: expected expected utility maximization and mean-variance criterion. Assuming that the mean-variance criterion is a good...

It is generally accepted that the recent economic crisis of 2007-2010 has caused widespread economic recession in different countries. Since the ports and coastal regions are of great importance to economic infrastructure, this study examined the possible impact resulting from such a global...

The Brownian correlation has been recently introduced by Székely et al. (2007; 2009), which has an attractive property that when it is zero, it guarantees independence. This paper investigates into the effects and advantages, if any, of replacement of the Pearsonian coefficient of correlation (r)...

Recent research work has shown that inflation rate is asymmetric and it is also well known that asymmetry is a non-linear phenomenon. In order to better understand this non-linearity in inflation of Pakistan, we investigate the possible presence of Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR)...

This report presents an application of a macro stress testing procedure on credit risk in the Romanian banking system. Macro stress testing, i.e. assessing the vulnerability of financial systems to exceptional but plausible macroeconomic scenarios, maintains a central role in macro-prudential...

Elhorst (2010) shows how the recent publication of LeSage and Pace (2009) in his expression “raises the bar” for our fitting of spatial econometrics models. By extending the family of models that deserve attention, Elhorst reveals the need to explore how they might be fitted, and discusses...

This paper investigated the impact of Foreign Direct Investment on some selected macro-economic variables such as real GDP, gross fixed capital formation and unemployment. Data for the variables were sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Statistical Bulletin. For the assessment of this...

This paper studies nonlinear, threshold, models in which some of the regressors can be endogenous. An estimation strategy based on instrumental variables was originally developed for dynamic panel models and we extend it to time series models. We apply this methodology to a forward-looking...

We present a comprehensive framework for Bayesian estimation of structural nonlinear dynamic economic models on sparse grids. The Smolyak operator underlying the sparse grids approach frees global approximation from the curse of dimensionality and we apply it to a Chebyshev approximation of the...