In everyday macroeconomic analysis, businessmen and policymakers monitor many variables in order to assess the current situation of a country’s business cycle. However, making this assessment is extremely difficult, especially on the verge of recessions: does a drop in one or more of these...

A shared belief in the financial industry is that markets are driven by two types of regimes. Bull markets would be characterized by high returns and low volatility whereas bear markets would display low returns coupled with high volatility. Modeling the dynam- ics of different asset classes...

In this paper we analyse the relative importance of fundamental and speculative demand on oil futures price levels and volatility. In a first step, we present a theoretical heterogeneous agent model of the oil futures market based on noise trading. We use the model to study the interaction...

Standard Real Business Cycle (RBC) models are well known to generate counter-factual asset pricing implications. This paper provides a simple extension to the prior literature where we study an economy that follows a regimes switching process both in the mean and the volatility, in conjunction...

In this paper we analyse the relative importance of fundamental and speculative demand on oil futures price levels and volatility. In a first step, we present a theoretical heterogeneous agent model of the oil futures market based on noise trading. We use the model to study the interaction...