The paper considers the Markov-Switching GARCH(1,1)-model with time-varying transition probabilities. It derives su?cient conditions for the square of the process to display long memory and provides some additional intuition for the empirical observation that estimated GARCH-parameters often sum...

We investigate the OLS-based estimator s2 of the disturbance variance in the standard linear regression model with cross section data when the disturbances are homoskedastic, but spatially correlated. For the most popular model of spatially autoregressive disturbances, we show that s2 can be...

We show that the F-test can be both liberal and conservative in the context of a particular type of nonspherical behaviour induced by spatial autocorrelation, and that the conservative variant is more likely to occur for extreme values of the spatial autocorrelation parameter. In particular, it...

The article shows by various examples how consumers of statistical information may be confused when this information is presented in terms of conditional probabilities. It also shows how this confusion helps others to lie with statistics, and it suggests how either confusion or lies can be...

We investigate the effect of the 20 largest – in terms of insured losses – man-made or natural disasters on the insurance industry. We show via an event study that insurance markets worldwide are quite resilient to unexpected losses to capital and are even outperforming the general market...

We consider 1927 borrowers from 54 countries who had a credit rating by both Moodys and S&P as of the end of 1998, and their subsequent default history up to the end of 2002. Viewing bond ratings as predicted probabilities of default, we show that it is unlikely that both agencies are well...

This note gives an easily verified necessary and sufficient condition for one probability forecaster to empirically outperform another one in terms of all strictly proper scoring rules.