The paper investigates the weak-form efficiency of ten African stock markets using the runs test methodology for serial dependency. Returns are calculated using the adjusted trade-to-trade approach. Serious thin-trading was observed on all markets, and more so for Namibia and Botswana, the two...

Time series evidence on exchange rates has been unable to reject the random walk hypothesis. A simple structural model that accounts for target zone nonlinearities provides conclusive evidence of mean reversion in EMS exchange rates.

Emerging markets are more volatile and face different types of shocks, in size and nature, compared to their developed counterparts. Accurate identification of the stochastic properties of shocks is difficult. We show evidence suggesting that uncertainty about the underlying stochastic process...

We develop monthly indicators for tracking growth in 32 advanced and emerging-market economies. We test the historical performance of our indicators and find that they do a good job at describing the business cycle. In a recursive out-of-sample forecasting exercise, we find that the indicators...

This paper develops a new forecasting framework for GDP growth in Korea to complement and further enhance existing forecasting approaches. First, a range of forecast models, including indicator- and pure time-series models, are evaluated for their forecasting performance. Based on the evaluation...

Macroeconomic policy decisions in real-time are based the assessment of current and future economic conditions. These assessments are made difficult by the presence of incomplete and noisy data. The problem is more acute for emerging market economies, where most economic data are released...

How does the South African government react to changes in its debt position? In investigating the question, this paper estimates fiscal reaction functions using various methods (OLS, VAR, TAR, GMM, State-Space modelling and VECM). The paper finds that since 1946 the South African government has...

A stochastic debt forecasting framework is presented where projected debt distributions reflect both the joint realization of the fiscal policy reaction to contemporaneous stochastic macroeconomic projections, and also the second-round effects of fiscal policy on macroeconomic projections. The...

The present study builds upon the seminal work of Engel and West [2005, Journal of Political Economy 113, 485-517] and in particular on the relationship between exchange rates and fundamentals. The paper discusses the well-known puzzle that fundamental variables such as money supplies, interest...

In the real investments literature, the investigated cash flow is assumed to follow some known stochastic process (e.g. Brownian motion) and the criterion to decide between investments is the discounted utility of their cash flows. However, for most new investments the investor may be ambiguous...