Loretan-Phillips maximal moment exponent estimators are used to investigate the distribution of S&P 500 stock returns at a range of different frequencies. In all cases, the variance is found to be finite, but the existence of higher-order moments is in some doubt.

For a number of EMU member Governments, prices of their (mainly) DM-denominated debt are compared with otherwise identical debt issued by the German Government, so as to extract implied risk-neutral default probabilities. In most cases, the probabilities are small, though in the case of Italy...