The successful investment policy is an integral part of successful activity of the insurance company. The return to the shareholders of the insurance company usually thought of as comprising the underwriting result and investment income. The investment income is very important even for an...

In this paper, we present a new time series model, whichdescribes self-exciting threshold autoregressive (SETAR) nonlinearityand seasonality simultaneously. The model is termed multiplicativeseasonal SETAR (SEASETAR). It can be viewed as a special case of ageneral non-multiplicativeSETAR model...

In this paper we propose a method for determining the number of regimes in threshold autoregressive models using smooth transition autoregression as a tool. As the smooth transition model is just an approximation to the threshold autoregressive one, no asymptotic properties are claimed for the...

We introduce a variant of the smooth transition autoregression - the GSTAR model - capable to parametrize the asymmetry in the tails of the transition equation by using a particular generalization of the logistic function. A General-to-Specific modelling strategy is discussed in detail, with...

This paper uses fractional integration and cointegration methods to analyse the determinants of the amount of loans provided to non-financial corporations (NFCs) during the last three decades in four Eurozone countries, namely Germany, France, Italy and Spain. More specifically, ARFIMA...

This paper describes a moments estimator for a standard state-space model with coefficients generated by a random walk. This estimator does not require that disturbances are normally distributed, but if they are, the proposed estimator is asymptotically equivalent to the maximum likelihood...

Surveys show that the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) is the most widely used measure of forecast accuracy in businesses and organizations. It is however, biased: When used to select among competing prediction methods it systematically selects those whose predictions are too low. This is...

In this paper we develop a test of the joint null hypothesis of parameter stability and a unit root within an ADF style autoregressive specification whose entire parameter structure is potentially subject to a structural break at an unknown time period. The maintained underlying null model is a...