Theoretical and empirical studies have treated excess returns as processes with time-varying but temporary disturbances. By contrast, empirical evidence indicates that the behavior of asset price levels can be well-approximated by processes with some permanent disturbances. These two...

In 2005, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) commissioned research to review international evaluation methodology and literature to help in the preparation of evaluation of the Working for Families (WFF) policy, introduced in 2004 to assist working low- and middle-income families in New...

Most studies of the expectations theory of the term structure reject the model. However, the significance of the rejections depend strongly upon the form of the test. In this paper, we use the pattern of rejection across maturities to back out the implied behavior of time-varying risk premia...

This paper presents a new explanation for the negative correlation between ex post real interest rates and inflation found in earlier empirical studies. We begin by showing that there is a strong negative correlation between the permanent movements in ex post real interest rates and inflation....

International capital flows have increased dramatically since the 1980s, with much of the increase being due to trade in equity and debt markets. Such developments are often attributed to the increased integration of world financial markets. We present a model that allows us to examine how...

Under conventional notions about rational expectations and market efficiency, expected returns differ from the actual expost returns by a forecast error that is uncorrelated with current information. In this paper, we describe how small departures from conventional notions of rational...

This paper presents a new numerical method for solving general equilibrium models with many assets. The method can be applied to models where there are heterogeneous agents, time-varying investment opportunity sets, and incomplete markets. It also can be used to study models where the...

The methodological review is the second part of the evaluation research commissioned by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in 2005 to help in the preparation of the evaluation of the Working for Families (WFF) programme. This review enumerates the key evaluation questions identified by MSD...