This paper reviews and documents methodology for fitting hidden Markov switching models to New Zealand GDP data. A primary objective is to better understand the utility of these methods for modelling growth and volatility regimes present in the New Zealand data and their interaction. Properties of the models are developed together with a description of the estimation methods, including use of t...

Introductory Offers in a Model of Strategic Competition* We show how introductory offers emerge endogenously under conditions of competition in markets with switching costs. In a standard Hotelling model we find the combination of switching costs and introductory discounts to reduce industry profits relative to industries without switching costs, in which introductory offers do not emerge. Thus...

The random walk is often used to model exchange rates. According to the Lucas critique, however, policy shifts may lead to breaks in the trend of exchange rates and hence to long swings. We use a Markov regime-switching model to allow for such swings and we reject the random walk in favor of the regime-switching model. Earlier papers report this result too, but the authors are concerned about t...

We propose a Markov model with an ergodic two-component switching mechanism that dynamically generates anomalous diffusion. The first component plays the role of a hidden parameter. The second one is the switching component generating the superdiffusion of a random walker and is itself non-Markovian. The model is studied numerically using the Monte Carlo technique. PACS numbers: 05.40.Fb, 02.50...

In this study a regime switching approach is applied to estimate the chartist and fundamentalist (c&f) exchange rate model originally proposed by Frankel and Froot (1986). The empirical results suggest that this model does successfully explain daily DM/Dollar forward exchange rate dynamics from 1982 to 1998. Moreover, our findings turned out to be relative robust by estimating the model in subs...

A Markov switching position dependent random map is a random map of a finite number of measurable transformations where the probability of switching from one transformation to another is controlled by a position dependent irreducible stochastic matrix W . Existence of absolutely continuous invariant measures (acim) for a Markov switching position dependent random map was proved in [1] using spe...

The study of the joint dynamic behavior between stock market returns and real economic growth rates is an important empirical question in finance and macroeconomics. This paper investigates their linkage by proposing a vector autoregressive infinite hidden Markov model. Our model has two advantages over the existing approaches in the literatures. In contrast to Markov switching models with fixe...

In this paper, finite phase semi-Markov processes are introduced. By introducing variables and a simple transformation, every finite phase semi-Markov process can be transformed to a finite Markov chain which is called its associated Markov chain. A consequence of this is that every phase semi-Markovian switching system may be equivalently expressed as its associated Markovian switching system....

This paper investigates whether a regime switching model of stochastic lumber prices is better for the analysis of optimal harvesting problems in forestry than a more traditional single regime model. Prices of lumber derivatives are used to calibrate a regime switching model, with each of two regimes characterized by a different mean reverting process. A single regime, mean reverting process is...