In this paper we aim to test the efficient market hypothesis (EMH), the case of the Romanian capital market. According to this purpose, our research aims to test the hypothesis of the random walk of the BET and BET-C stock indicators of the Bucharest Stock Exchange and to this end we apply...

Using data from Argentina, Australia, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and the United States, we identify three types of threshold effects when assessing the impact of economic activity on nonperforming loans (NPLs). For advanced financial systems showing low NPLs, there is an embedded...

This paper identifies and describes key features of Caribbean business cycles during the period 1963-2003. In particular, the chronologies in the Caribbean classical cycle (expansions and contractions in the level of output) and growth cycle (periods of above-trend and below-trend rates of...

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) is a key source of forecasts of global economic conditions. It is therefore important to review the performance of these forecasts against both actual outcomes and alternative forecasts. This paper conducts a series of statistical tests to evaluate the quality of...

This paper investigates the increasing exposure of European households to risky financial assets and the consequent impact on the economy. I analyze household data for Italy and the United Kingdom, countries that differ dramatically in their financial structure and capital markets. I estimate an...

One approach to oil markets is to treat oil as an asset, besides its role as a commodity. Speculative and nonspeculative activity by investors in the derivatives markets could be responsible for a sizable increase in oil prices. This paper recognizes both the consumption and investment aspects...

This paper examines the validity of the Random Walk Model in the Pakistani equity market. The model, extensively tested in other equity markets, implies that past movements in a stock price are not helpful in predicting future prices of that stock. The model states that changes in stock prices...

Using monthly data for a set of variables, we examine the out-of-sample performance of various variance/covariance models and find that no model has consistently outperformed the others. We also show that it is possible to increase the probability mass toward the tails and to match reasonably...

This paper provides a selective overview of nonlinear exchange rate models recently proposed in the literature and assesses their contribution to understanding exchange rate behavior. Two key questions are examined. The first question is whether nonlinear autoregressive models of real exchange...