Search results for "volatility"
showing 10 items of 245 documents
Does Inflation Targeting Affect the Trade-off Between Output Gap and Inflation Variability?
2002
We utilize a stochastic volatility model to analyse the possible effects of inflation targeting on the trade–off between output gap variability and inflation variability. We find that the adoption of inflation targets (in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK, Sweden and Finland) might result in a more favourable monetary policy trade–off (except in Australia and Finland). This conclusion is reached by comparing, first, the economic performance of targeting countries in the 1980s and the 1990s; and second, the economic performance in the 1990s of targeting and non–targeting countries (the USA, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France and the Netherlands). We focus on two possible explanations f…
Is the EUA a new asset class?
2022
The listing of a new asset requires knowledge of its statistical properties prior to its use for hedging, speculative or risk management purposes. In this paper, the authors study the stylised facts of European Union Allowances (EUAs) returns. The majority of the phenomena observed, such as heavy tails, volatility clustering, asymmetric volatility and the presence of a high number of outliers are similar to those observed in both commodity futures and financial assets. However, properties such as negative asymmetry, positive correlation with stocks indexes and higher volatility levels during the trading session, typical of financial assets, and the existence of inflation hedge and positive …
Impact of interest rate risk on the Spanish banking sector
2010
This paper examines the exposure of the Spanish banking sector to interest rate risk. With that aim, a univariate GARCH-M model, which takes into account not only the impact of interest rate changes but also the effect of their volatility on the distribution of bank stock returns, is used. The results show that both changes and volatility of interest rates have a negative and significant impact on the stock returns of the Spanish banking industry. Moreover, there seems to be a direct relationship between the size of banking firms and their degree of interest rate sensitivity.
The International Business Cycle in a Changing World: Volatility and the Propagation of Shocks
2003
This paper examines the changing relationships between the G-7 countries through VAR models for the quarterly growth rates, estimated both over sub-periods and using a rolling data window. Six trivariate models are estimated, all of which include the US and a European (E15) aggregate. In relative terms, the conditional volatility of E15 growth has declined more since 1980 than the well-documented decline for the US. The propagation of shocks has also changed, with the volatility and propagation effects separated by applying shocks of pre-1980 magnitude to VARs estimated over various periods. Rolling estimation reveals that E15 has a steadily increasing impact on the US economy over time, wh…
Enhancement of stability in systems with metastable states
2007
The investigation of noise‐induced phenomena in far from equilibrium systems is one of the approach used to understand the behaviour of physical and biological complex systems. Metastability is a generic feature of many nonlinear systems, and the problem of the lifetime of metastable states involves fundamental aspects of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The enhancement of the life‐time of metastable states through the noise enhanced stability effect and the role played by the resonant activation phenomenon will be discussed in models of interdisciplinary physics: (i) Ising model (ii) Josephson junction; (iii) stochastic FitzHugh‐Nagumo model; (iv) a population dynamics model, and (v) …
Switching to floating exchange rates, devaluations, and stock returns in MENA countries
2012
Abstract We test for the impact of the announcements of floating and/or devaluating the exchange rate on stock returns in three MENA countries after the financial crises they experienced. We, first, use an event-study methodology to test for event-induced abnormal volatility of stock returns in Egypt, Morocco and Turkey. We, then, use three different methodologies to test for abnormal returns: a traditional approach and two approaches that control for event-induced volatility. We find clear evidence of abnormal volatility and abnormal returns due to the floating of the Egyptian and Turkish exchange rates in 2003 and 2001, respectively. In contrast, our results do not show that the devaluati…
Country size and business cycle volatility: Scale really matters
2007
Abstract In a recent study Andrew Rose found that country size does not matter for several economic outcomes [Rose, A.K., 2006. Size really doesn't matter: In search of a national scale effect. J. Japanese Int. Economies 4, 482–507]. However, he did not consider the effect that country size may have on business-cycle volatility. To investigate the empirical relationship between business cycle volatility and country size, we use a panel data set that includes 167 countries from 1960 to 2000. The results suggest very strongly that the relationship between country size and business cycle volatility is negative and statistically significant. This implies that smaller countries are subject to mo…
Long-Run Growth and Volatility: Which Source Really Matters
2010
The aim of the article is to analyse the relationship between long-run growth and business cycle volatility. In particular, the main purpose of this article is to identify which source of volatility is most detrimental to growth. Using cross-country data from 1970 to 2000, and several indicators of volatility (such as inflation, exchange rate, government expenditure, output and investment volatility) this article shows that although, all these measures of volatility are remarkably harmful for growth, business cycle investment volatility is the main source that hampers long-run growth. This relation is robust to different measures of business cycle, and to different sub-samples of countries.
Evolution of the Global Distribution of Carbon Dioxide: A Finite Mixture Analysis
2015
Economists and environmental policymakers have recently begun advocating a bottom-up approach to climate change mitigation, focusing on reduction targets for groups of nations, rather than large scale global policies. We advance this discussion by taking a quantitative perspective, focusing on econometric identification of groups of countries that have statistically similar distributions of carbon emissions using a broad range of finite mixture models. Nearly all of our results yield a consistent pattern: after 1980, there are two distinct emissions distributions, and that these distributions continue to evolve over time. We provide a rigorous analysis of these distributional differences al…
FISCAL POLICY, MACROECONOMIC STABILITY AND FINITE HORIZONS
2003
In this paper we analyse the stabilisation properties of distortionary taxes in a New Keynesian model with overlapping generations of finitely-lived consumers. In this framework, government debt is part of net wealth and this adds a number of interesting channels through which fiscal policy could affect output and inflation. Output volatility, in presence of technology shocks, is not substantially affected by the operation of automatic stabilisers but we find interesting composition effects. While the presence of finitely-lived households strengthens the stabilisation performance of distortionary taxes through the reduction of the volatility of consumption, it does so at the cost of more vo…