This simulation study investigates the forecasting performance of a new information criterion suggested by Hatemi-J (2003) to pick the optimal lag length in the stable and unstable vector autregression (VAR) models. The conducted Monte Carlo experiments reveal that this information criterion is...

The aim of this study is to investigate empirically the underlying nexus of stock market returns and volatility in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by using the GARCH-M model. We find that volatility is time-varying in all countries,...

Purpose – In all existing theoretical papers on causality it is assumed that the lag length is known a priori. However, in applied research the lag length has to be selected before testing for causality. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that in investigating the effectiveness of various...

Purpose – In the literature on the effects of economic globalization, the compensation hypothesis suggests that there is a positive link between government size and external risk as governments perform a risk mitigating role to insure against productivity shocks through transfers. In contrast,...

Since the seminal work by Sims (1980), the impulse response functions are regularly applied to capture the propagation mechanism of a shock across time. This paper suggests a new approach for allowing asymmetry in the impulse response functions. This is an issue that has been neglected in the...

The classic Dickey-Fuller unit-root test can be applied using three different equations, depending upon the inclusion of a constant and/or a time trend in the regression equation. This paper investigates the size and power properties of a unit-root testing strategy outlined in Enders (2004),...

One of the shortcomings of the Black and Scholes model on option pricing is the assumption that trading of the underlying asset does not affect the price of that asset. This assumption can be fulfilled only in perfectly liquid markets. Since most markets are illquid, this assumption might be too...

Option pricing is an integral part of modern financial risk management. The well-known Black and Scholes (1973) formula is commonly used for this purpose. This paper is an attempt to extend their work to a situation in which the unconditional volatility of the original asset is increasing during...

Applying VAR(5), a bootstrap simulation approach and a multivariate Rao's F-test indicate that government revenue Granger-causes spending in Finland. This does not agree with Barr's tax smoothing hypothesis. This explanation of this is due to the institutional factors that are specific for Finland.