Despite the high volatilities recorded for electricity prices, there seems to be little demand for options on electricity. One reason for the disinterest in electricity options could arise from uncertainty about how to price these options. This study uses recent econometric advances to...

The aim of this letter is to discuss and illustrate what we call (lambda, sigma-2)analysis, which is a method to distinguish between the stability of a stochastic dynamic system and the volatility of a variable generated by this system. It is also emphasized that this method is able to generate...

By using a novel approach in this paper,(lambda,sigma²)-analysis, we have found that electricity prices most of the time have increased in stability and decreased in volatility when the Nordic power market has expanded and the degree of competition has increased. That electricity prices at Nord...

In this paper we consider the forecasting performance of a range of semi- and non- parametric methods applied to high frequency electricity price data. Electricity price time-series data tend to be highly seasonal, mean reverting with price jumps/spikes and time- and price-dependent volatility....

A transformation kernel density estimator that is suitable for heavy-tailed distributions is discussed. Using a truncated Beta transformation, the choice of the bandwidth parameter becomes straightforward. An application to insurance data and the calculation of the value-at-risk are presented.

In this paper we estimate, analyze and compare the term structures of interest rates in six different countries over the period 1992-2004. We apply the Nelson-Siegel model to obtain the term structures of interest rates at weekly intervals. A total of 4,038 curves are estimated and analyzed....

This paper uses a novelty dataset of poor households in peri-urban areas in Vietnam to estimate impacts of small loans on child schooling. The Probit and Negative Binomial model estimates roughly indicate no strong evidence of the effect, especially of informal credit. Formal credit is likely to...

This paper develops a new test, the trinomial test, for pairwise ordinal data samples to improve the power of the sign test by modifying its treatment of zero differences between observations, thereby increasing the use of sample information. Simulations demonstrate the power superiority of the...

This paper examines investor preferences for oil spot and futures based on mean-variance (MV) and stochastic dominance (SD). The mean-variance criterion cannot distinct the preferences of spot and market whereas SD tests leads to the conclusion that spot dominates futures in the downside risk...

This paper examines the market efficiency of oil spot and futures prices by using both mean-variance (MV) and stochastic dominance (SD) approaches. Based on the West Texas Intermediate crude oil data for the sample period 1989-2008, we find no evidence of any MV and SD relationships between oil...