We present new evidence on disaggregated profit and loss (P/L) and Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasts obtained from a large international commercial bank. Our dataset includes the actual daily P/L generated by four separate business lines within the bank. All four business lines are involved in...

We present new evidence on disaggregated profit and loss and VaR forecasts obtained from a large international commercial bank. Our dataset includes daily P/L generated by four separate business lines within the bank. All four business lines are involved in securities trading and each is...

Financial risk model evaluation or backtesting is a key part of the internal model's approach to market risk management as laid out by the Basle Commitee on Banking Supervision (1996). However, existing backtesting methods such as those developed in Christoffersen (1998), have relatively small...

We present a general framework for testing the accuracy of Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasts. The approach is based on the observation that violations – the days on which portfolio losses exceed the VaR – should be unpredictable. Specifically, these violations form a martingale difference...

In this study, we develop a new approach to investigate spatial market integration. In particular, it is a Markov-Switching autoregressive (MSAR) model with time-varying state transition probabilities. Studying market integration is an effective way to test whether the law of one price holds...

This paper develops a life-cycle portfolio allocation model to address the effects of housing investment on the portfolio allocation of households. The model employs a comprehensive housing investment structure, Epstein-Zin recursive preferences and a stock market entry cost. Furthermore, rather...

The 2006 spike in corn-based ethanol demand has contributed to the increase in basis volatility in corn and soybean markets across the United States, which has, to a significant degree, led to the observed large jumps in the prices of the two commodities. Despite the overall rise in basis...

We propose methods for testing hypothesis of non-causality at various horizons, as defined in Dufour and Renault (1998, Econometrica). We study in detail the case of VAR models and we propose linear methods based on running vector autoregressions at different horizons. While the hypotheses...

Models use for natural resources prices usually preclude the possibility of large changes (jumps) resulting from discrete, unexpected events. To test for the presence of jumps and ARCH effects, we propose to use bounds and bootstrap test techniques, thus solving the unidentified nuisance...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/29/09.