Corruption is often a source of contentious debate, covering different areas of knowledge, such as philosophy and sociology. In this paper we assess the effects of corruption on economic activity and highlight the relevance of the size of the government. We use dynamic models and the Generalized...

Models based on economic theory have serious problems at forecasting exchange rates better than simple univariate driftless random walk models, especially at short horizons. Multivariate time series models suffer from the same problem. In this paper, we propose to forecast exchange rates with a...

Both global imbalances and financial market (de-)regulation feature prominently among the potential causes of the global financial crisis, but they have been largely discussed separately. In this paper, we take a different angle and investigate the relationship between financial market...

This paper considers factor estimation from heterogenous data, where some of the variables are noisy and only weakly informative for the factors. To identify the irrelevant variables, we search for zero rows in the loadings matrix of the factor model. To sharply separate these irrelevant...

This paper assesses that participation of countries in IMF programs significantly diminishes their vulnerability to external shocks. Currently, one of the primary purposes of the IMF is to ensure global stability. As such, the Fund has the responsibility of advising member countries on the...

What determines the direction of spread of currency crises? We examine data on waves of currency crises in 1992, 1994, 1997, and 1998 to evaluate several hypotheses on the determinants of contagion. We simultaneously consider trade competition, financial links, and institutional similarity to...

We investigate the persistence of real exchange rates using Bayesian methods. First, an algorithm for Bayesian estimation of nonlinear threshold models is developed. Unlike standard grid-based estimation, the Bayesian approach fully captures joint parameter uncertainty and uncertainty about...

This paper applies a Bayesian model averaging algorithm to systematically evaluate the “law matters” literature and finds that the positive cross-country relationship between anti-self-dealing rules and stock market development proposed by Djankov, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, and Sheifer...

This paper considers factor estimation from heterogenous data, where some of the variables are noisy and only weakly informative for the factors. To identify the irrelevant variables, we search for zero rows in the loadings matrix of the factor model. To sharply separate these irrelevant...

Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasting via a computational Bayesian framework is considered. A range of parametric models are compared, including standard, threshold nonlinear and Markov switching GARCH specifications, plus standard and nonlinear stochastic volatility models, most considering four...