Reference-dependent preference models assume that agents derive utility from deviations of consumption from benchmark levels, rather than from consumption levels. These references can be either backward-looking (as explicit in the Habit literature) or forward-looking (as implicitly suggested by...

The Central European countries became members of the European Union (EU) in May 2004. Has their accession into the EU also resulted in a stronger financial integration with the global economy in general and with the "old" EU countries in particular? Based on a cointegration analysis applied to...

We investigate the linkage between business cycle convergence and financial portfolio choice for a panel of 18 EU countries. We construct an index of similarity of financial portfolios which we then put into context with the view that “the financial world” has an impact on business cycles...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship of price changes in the southern European E.U. member states through their stock markets and especially among the exchange markets of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, known also as the PIIGS countries. More specifically, it is...

Adopting a MS-VAR model (Krolzig, 1997) and a recently developed regime-dependent impulse response analysis technique (Ehrmann, et al., 2003), this paper investigates the dynamic relationships among the stock markets of the US, Australia and New Zealand. Our results reveal the existence of two...

This paper aims at contributing to the international portfolio investment decisions among the emerging BRICS countries where individual and institutional investors seek diversification benefits and to help in advocating policy changes and implementation as a response to the changing dynamics in...

This paper proposes a new mutual exciting regime-switching model where crises can spread contagiously across countries. Each country has its own hidden stochastic process that determines whether it is in a normal or crisis regime. The mutual-excitation component allows interactions in the Markov...

In this paper, we develop a non-parametric matching method to estimate the over or under valuation of sovereign risk in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) between 2004 and 2007. CEECs are matched to other countries that are very similar with regards to macroeconomic fundamentals....

This paper analyzes the sovereign risk contagion using credit default swaps (CDS) and bond premiums for the major eurozone countries. By emphasizing several econometric approaches (nonlinear regression, quantile regression and Bayesian quantile regression with heteroskedasticity) we show that...

This article examines whether there is a correlation between the government bond markets of Asian countries and those of the USA, and whether the efforts of international organizations to improve bond markets have had any effect in East Asia. Because the sizes of the government bond markets are...