The aim of this paper is to forecast (out-of-sample) the distribution of financial returns based on realized volatility measures constructed from high-frequency returns. We adopt a semi-parametric model for the distribution by assuming that the return quantiles depend on the realized measures and evaluate the distribution, quantile and interval forecasts of the quantile model in comparison to a...

We empirically investigate the degree of integration that existed prior to the cost increases that caused emergency conditions in the Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC), particularly California, during the summer of 2000. Evidence from Granger causality tests and common features analysis over the period from December 1994 to September 1999 indicates a moderate degree of integration amo...

abstract: decentralization is a process in which local affairs are administrated by local authorities outside of activities of the central government. today, decentralization policy is considered as one of the ways that most countries adopted to improve public sector performance. in this paper using geometric analysis, innovation that this paper represents, an econometric model is considered to...

Within a flexible regression model (Hamilton, 2001) we offer a battery of new Lagrange multiplier statistics that circumvent the problem of unidentified nuisance parameters under the null hypothesis of linearity and that are robust to the specification of the covariance function that defines the random field. These advantages are the result of (i) switching from the L2 to the L1 norm; and (ii) ...

This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper forecasts inflation in Sudan following two methodo...

In this paper we consider the problem of determining the number of structural changes in multiple linear regression models via group fused Lasso (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator). We show that with probability tending to one our method can correctly determine the unknown number of breaks and the estimated break dates are sufficiently close to the true break dates. We obtain esti...

This study investigates the day of the week effect on the volatility of major stock market indexes for the period of 1988 through 2002. Using a conditional variance framework, we find that the day of the week effect is present in both return and volatility equations. The highest volatility occurs on Mondays for Germany and Japan, on Fridays for Canada and the United States, and on Thursdays for...

The properties and applications of the normal log-normal (NLN) mixture are considered. The moment of the NLN mixture is shown to be finite for any positive order. The expectations of exponential functions of a NLN mixture variable are also investigated. The kurtosis and skewness of the NLN mixture are explicitly shown to be determined by the variance of the log-normal and the correlation betwee...

Previous studies typically find a statistically insignificant relationship between the market risk premium and its expected volatility. Further, several of these studies estimate a negative risk return tradeoff contrary to the predictions of mainstream theory. Using simulations, I demonstrate that even 100 years of data constitute a small sample that may easily lead to this finding even though ...

We propose a dynamic model for financial market volatility with an heterogeneous structure for three components: continuous volatiilty, leverage and jumps. We find that each of the three components plays a significant role in volatility forecasting and neglecting one of them is detrimental to the forecasting performance. Importantly, we find remarkable forecasting power for the negative past re...