In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for some European countries, over the period 1963-2000, on whether business cycle affects convergence process or catching-up. To do so, we first evaluate beta-convergence. We find evidence in favour of this type of convergence for six countries...

This paper develops a model which is able to forecast exchange rate turmoil. Our starting point relies on the empirical evidence that exchange rate volatility is not constant. In fact, the modeling strategy adopted refers to the vast literature of the GARCH class of models, where the variance...

This paper provides evidence on the causes of movements in monthly UK stock prices, examining the role of macroeconomic and financial variables in a nonlinear framework. We allow for time-varying effects through the use of smooth transition models. We find that past changes in the dividend yield...

This paper uses a multivariate regime-switching framework to investigate and endogenously date changes in return characteristics on the four largest Nordic stock markets. We find that the deregulated time-period, specifically after 1982, is associated with higher expected return, higher...

This paper implements a regime-switching framework to study speculative attacks against EMS currencies during 1979-1993. To identify speculative episodes, we model exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates as time series subject to discrete regime shifts between two possible states:...

We consider whether oil prices can account for business cycle asymmetries. We test for asymmetries based on the Markov switching autoregressive model popularized by Hamilton (1989), using the tests devised by Clements and Krolzig (2000). We find evidence against the conventional wisdom that...

This paper surveys recent developments related to the smooth transition autoregressive (STAR) time series model and several of its variants. We put emphasis on new methods for testing for STAR nonlinearity, model evaluation, and forecasting. Several useful extensions of the basic STAR model,...