Being able to correctly characterise an observed time series into its separate difference stationary and trend stationary regimes, should they exist, has important implications for effective model building and forecasting in economics and finance. Existing ratio-based statistics test the null...

In this paper, starting from continuous-time local level unobserved components models for stock and flow data we derive locally best invariant (LBI) stationarity tests for data available at potentially irregularly spaced points in time. We demonstrate that the form of the LBI test differs...

This paper proposes bootstrap versions of the seasonal unit root tests of, inter alia, Hylleberg, Engle, Granger and Yoo (1990,Journal of Econometrics 55, 305-328)[HEGY]. We report a simulation study of the properties of both the conventional and bootstrapped seasonal unit root tests when...

We introduce continuous-time models that capture the salient features of the short-term interest rate and remain tractable for asset pricing applications. We extend classical specifications within and outside of the affine class to multi-factor settings with latent variables that are readily...

This paper studies optimal asset allocation to stocks, long-term bonds and T-bills and consumption choice in the presence of regime switching in asset returns. Optimal asset allocations vary considerably across four states - both across bonds and stocks and among large and small stocks - and...

Survey data on expectations frequently find evidence that forecasts are biased, rejecting the joint hypothesis of rational expectations and symmetric loss. While the literature has attempted to explain this bias through forecasters' strategic behavior, we propose a simpler explanation based on...

This paper shows that the best known empirical biases of the Black and Scholes (1973) option pricing formula can be explained by investors learning the parameters of the underlying fundamental process. In the context of an equilibrium model where dividend news evolve on a binomial lattice we...

This paper investigates the presence of bull and bear market states in stock price dynamics. A new definition of bull and bear market states based on sequences of stopping times tracing local peaks and troughs in stock prices is proposed. Duration dependence in stock prices is investigated...

Evaluation of forecast optimality in economics and finance has almost exclusively been conducted under the assumption of mean squared error loss. Under this loss function optimal forecasts should be unbiased and forecast errors should be serially uncorrelated at the single period horizon with...

Floating exchange rates display substantial short-run volatility causing a nontrivial information problem in disentangling temporary from permanent changes. Although agents observe current market signals they are imperfectly informed about the future, but they accumulate information and learn...