Article history: Received 23 August 2011 Received in revised form 16 April 2012 Accepted 19 April 2012 Available online 5 May 2012 This paper proposes a two-state Markov-switching model for stock market returns in which the state-dependent expected returns, their variance and associated regime-switching dynamics are allowed to respond to market information. More specifically, we apply this mode...

This paper explains why some employees who favor unionization fail to join, and why others who wish to abandon union membership continue paying dues. Our explanation is based on a model where employees incur switching (search) costs when attempting to abandon (acquire) union membership. Empirical analysis for Britain confirms one of the main predictions from the switching-cost-model that segmen...

Though Hamilton's (1989) Markov switching model has been widely estimated in various contexts, formal testing for Markov switching is not straightforward. Univariate tests in the classical framework by Hansen (1992) and Garcia (1998) do not reject the linear model for GDP. We present Bayesian tests for Markov switching in both univariate and multivariate settings based on sensitivity of the pos...

This paper empirically compares the Markov-switching and stochastic volatility diffusion models of the short rate. The evidence supports the Markov-switching diffusion model. Estimates of the elasticity of volatility parameter for single regime models unanimously indicate an explosive volatility process, while the Markov-switching models estimates are reasonable. We find that either Markov-swit...

We study the design of optimal monetary policy under uncertainty in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models. We use a Markov jump-linear-quadratic (MJLQ) approach to study policy design, approximating the uncertainty by different discrete modes in a Markov chain, and by taking mode-dependent linear-quadratic approximations of the underlying model. This allows us to apply a powerful meth...

i n the past decades, the effect of different tax amendments on various economic issues has been studied. the majority of these studies have avoided considering shadow economy as part of the calculation and analysis, and an issue, which has received little attention, is the relationship between green tax reforms and shadow economy, as for informal labor, which is well-connected to unemployment ...