Between the 1970's and the 1980's, the derivatives market flourished. Forwards, futures and options began to be regularly traded. According to information gathered by The Bank of International Settlements, at the end of April 2001 the value of over the counter(OTC) positions outstanding was over...

It is usually conjectured that the nominal exchange rate should be more volatile under a free float than under a dirty float regime. This paper examines this issue for the Chilean economy. Specifically, in September 1999 the Central Bank of Chile eliminated the floating band for the nominal...

Numerous studies have resorted to parametric models to infer the shape of the term structure of interest rates. Recently, however, it has been shown that non-parametric techniques may be more adequate. <BR> This is an empirical study for Chile between December 1992 and April 1998. Monte Carlo...

In this article, we forecast crude oil and natural gas spot prices at a daily frequency based on two classification techniques: artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM). As a benchmark, we utilize an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) specification. We...

Exchanges rate markets exhibit correlation in the short run, but the issue is whether such correlation lingers over long periods of time, and under extreme events (i.e., either large appreciations or depreciations). In this paper, we analyze dependence between nominal exchange rates under...

In this article, we pursue to determine which mining firms have seen their stock returns become more sensitive to fluctuations in energy prices, over a time period predominated by the political turmoil caused by 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. By resorting to wavelets and spatial...

There is an extensive literature on the determinants of capital structure for developed countries, but little has been said about emerging economies. This article analyzes the driving forces of capital structure in Chile for the period 1990-2002. We study aggregate leverage and interest-bearing...

Using monthly industrial sector data from January 1971 to March 2004, we test for business cycles convergence among the major APEC members: Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, USA, and Canada. In addition, we examine the synchronization of business cycles among Australia, Japan, and South...

To date, there is no consensus about how frictions in the credit market affect the transmission of the monetary policy to the real economy. The traditional money channel states that when the Central Bank reduces its reserves, commercial banks are forced to reduce their demand for deposits. If...

This article looks at the determinants of liquidity premium of the term structure of interest rates. Based upon a very simple model, we show that liquidity premium is not necessarily positive, as usually believed. This point is illustrated empirically with Chilean data for the sample period...