Volume 12, Issue 4

This paper analyses the behaviour of a Wald-type test, i.e., the (Efficient) Fractional Dickey-Fuller (EFDF) test of I(1) against I(d), d<1, relative to LM tests. Further, it extends the implementation of the EFDF test to the presence of deterministic trending components in the DGP. Tests of these hypotheses are important in many macroeconomic applications where it is crucial to distinguish between permanent and transitory shocks because shocks die out in I(d) processes with d<1. We show how simple the implementation of the EFDF in these situations is and argue that, under fixed alternatives, it is preferred to the LM test in Bahadur's sense. Finally, an empirical application is provided where the EFDF approach allowing for deterministic components is used to test for long-memory in the GDP p.c. of several OECD countries, an issue that has important consequences to discriminate between alternative growth theories.

A new early-warning system for international currency crises is developed in this paper. The existing crisis indicators in the literature are essentially static. We examine the relationship between the dynamics of foreign reserves and currency crises. It is shown that rapid reserve depletion is a prominent feature before the collapse of the exchange rate system. The results from our threshold autoregressive model suggest that when the Reserves-to-Short-Term External Debt falls by more than 29.1%, or if the Reserves-to-M2 ratio drops by more than 24.3% within six months, the likelihood of a crisis increases. Our model provides clear warning signals for policy makers to take actions before the reserves have reached a critical value that heralds the arrival of a full-blown crisis.

This paper argues that nonlinear adjustment may provide a better explanation of fluctuations in the consumption-wealth ratio. The nonlinearity is captured by a Markov-switching vector error-correction model that allows the dynamics of the relationship to differ across regimes. Estimation of the system suggests that these states are related to the behaviour of financial markets. In fact, estimation of the system suggests that short-term deviations in the consumption-wealth ratio will forecast either asset returns or consumption growth; the first when changes in wealth are transitory, the second when changes in wealth are permanent. Our approach uncovers a richer and more complex dynamic in the consumption-wealth ratio than previous results in the literature, whilst being in accordance with theoretical predictions of a simple model of consumption under uncertainty.

This paper departs from the standard open-economy Ramsey model and introduces additional concerns for wealth, status and Easterlin's (2001) hypothesis that consumption changes, in particular increases, are important and not only the level. These extensions induce first of all interior steady states, which are lacking in the standard model, multiple steady states (separated by thresholds leading to history dependence) and limit cycles. The existence of cyclical consumption patterns could provide a so far ignored source for real business cycles. Surprisingly, introducing status conferred by private wealth or conspicuous consumption has no effect despite the involved externalities (the outcomes are observationally equivalent) as long as the social influence associated with the status externalities remains moderate.

Recent research has generated support of the notion that the real exchange rate adjustment is nonlinear and that the PPP half-life is faster than the puzzling 3 to 5 years based on linear models. While different nonlinear models survive the specification tests against linear ones, there is little consensus on which specific threshold-type model outperforms the others in the family. In this paper, a Monte Carlo study is designed to address the issue and the findings support that the MR-LSTAR process is the most likely suspect that generates the puzzle.

Nonlinearity in the relationship between mutual funds and market returns is often assumed when market timing is assessed. Hence, a quadratic term is introduced into the classic linear model to measure market timing. However, nonlinearity could be due to other factors and the evidence of market timing, usually negative in the literature, may therefore be biased. In this context, the aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of time-varying beta risk and benchmark omission when measuring market timing ability in mutual funds. The first part of the paper shows how the existence of time-varying beta risk produces artificial evidence of market timing, especially when considering asymmetries. In the second part, Kalman filtering is used to estimate the time-varying beta for mutual funds and market timing is then assessed. In general, changes in risk are not related to up and down markets, although some funds show a negative relation between beta variation and market sign. Evidence of negative market timing may be inferred from this result. The results are sensitive to two outliers, corresponding to the launch of the Euro in European financial markets and 9-11. However, passive benchmarks with asset weights different from those of the benchmark also give rise to this result. After these omitted benchmarks have been introduced, any previous evidence of negative market timing disappears almost completely. These results hold when mutual fund net cash flows are controlled for. Therefore, time-varying beta risk and benchmark omission could produce a spurious relationship between the variation of portfolio risk and markets which, in the absence of information about timing decisions, could lead us to infer evidence of market timing mistakenly.