This paper applies the methodology developed by Forte and Peña (2006) to extract the implied default point in the premium on credit default swaps (CDS). As well as considering a more extensive international sample of corporations (96 US, European and Japanese companies) and a longer time...

We derive the statistical properties of the SNP densities of Gallant and Nychka (1987). We show that these densities, which are always positive, are more flexible than truncated Gram-Charlier expansions with positivity restrictions. We use the SNP densities for financial derivatives valuation....

We analyze the impact of high frequency trading in financial markets based on a model with three types of traders: liquidity traders, market makers, and high frequency traders. Our four main findings are: i) The price impact of the liquidity trades is higher in the presence of the high frequency...

We conduct an extensive empirical analysis of VIX derivative valuation models before, during and after the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Since the restrictive mean reversion and heteroskedasticity features of existing models yield large distortions during the crisis, we propose generalisations...

We develop a dynamic factor model to compute short term forecasts of the Spanish GDP growth in real time. With this model, we compute a business cycle index which works well as an indicator of the business cycle conditions in Spain. To examine its real time forecasting accuracy, we use real-time...

We present evidence about the loss of the so-called "plucking effect", that is, a high-growth phase of the cycle typically observed at the end of recessions. This result matches the belief, presented informally by different authors, that recession may have now permanent effects, or recession...

We propose a Markov-switching dynamic factor model to construct an index of global business cycle conditions, for performing short-term forecasts of quarterly world GDP growth in real time and computing real-time business cycle probabilities. To overcome the real-time forecasting challenges, the...

We examine the finite-sample performance of small versus large scale dynamic factor models. Our Monte Carlo analysis reveals that small scale factor models out-perform large scale models in factor estimation and forecasting for high levels of cross-correlation across the idiosyncratic errors of...

In this paper we propose a new real-time forecasting model for euro area GDP growth, D€STINY, which attempts to bridge the existing gap in the literature between large- and small-scale dynamic factor models. By adopting a disaggregated modelling approach, D€STINY uses most of the information...

Much has been written about why economists failed to predict the latest financial and real crisis. Reading the recent literature, it seems that the crisis was so obvious that economists must have been blind when looking at data not to see it coming. In this paper, we analyze whether such claims...