Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has b... more Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has been conducted in the framework of cointegration. However, parts of this approach have been questioned recently, as the adjustment mechanism may not follow a simple linear rule; another line of criticism points out that stationarity of the spreads is difficult to maintain empirically. In this paper, we analyse data on US bond yields by means of an augmented VAR specification which approximates a generic nonlinear adjustment model. We argue that nonlinearity captures macro information via the shape of the yield curve and thus provides an alternative explanation for some findings recently appeared in the literature. Moreover, we show how conditional heteroskedasticity can be taken into account via GARCH specifications for the conditional variance, either univariate and multivariate.
Journal of risk and financial management, Mar 4, 2020
We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Corre... more We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) specification by Engle (2002), the generalised version by Cappiello et al. (2006), and of the cDCC model by Aielli(2013). We discuss how the gradient might be further extended by introducing elements related to the conditional variance parameters, and discuss the issue arising from the estimation of constrained and/or reparametrised versions of the model. A computational simulation compares analytical versus numerical gradients, with a view to parameter estimation; we find that analytical differentiation yields more efficiency and improved accuracy.
Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has b... more Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has been conducted in the framework of cointegration. However, parts of this approach have been questioned recently, as the adjustment mechanism may not follow a simple linear rule; another line of criticism points out that stationarity of the spreads is difficult to maintain empirically. In this paper, we analyse data on US bond yields by means of an augmented VAR specification which approximates a generic nonlinear adjustment model. We argue that nonlinearity captures macro information via the shape of the yield curve and thus provides an alternative explanation for some findings recently appeared in the literature. Moreover, we show how conditional heteroskedasticity can be taken into account via GARCH specifications for the conditional variance, either univariate and multivariate.
The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, May 1, 2011
This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contributi... more This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contribution to the existing literature is twofold concerning both the methodological and the conceptual aspects. From the former point of view, we use the two-stages Heckit model which allows us to take into account the sample selection bias deriving from the "buying" risk, that affects transactions at auction. From the latter point of view, we have found that some sale characteristics such as auction house prestige and year of sale, are more important than the physical aspects of the paintings. Moreover, some artistic characteristics, the artist's name and their living status are also relevant. An estimation using pre-sale evaluation by experts has also been tried: this explanatory variable seems to be the main driver regarding both the probability of having an unsold painting and the auction price levels reached by sold works. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of its sufficiency is rejected and some problems related to the economic interpretation of the results arise. The whole analysis is carried out after creating a new dataset of 2817 transactions which took place at the most important auction houses between 1990 and 2006.
This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contributi... more This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contribution to the existing literature is twofold concerning both the methodological and the conceptual aspects. From the former point of view, we use the two-stages Heckit model which allows us to take into account the sample selection bias deriving from the "buying" risk, that affects transactions at auction. From the latter point of view, we have found that some sale characteristics such as auction house prestige and year of sale, are more important than the physical aspects of the paintings. Moreover, some artistic characteristics, the artist's name and their living status are also relevant. An estimation using pre-sale evaluation by experts has also been tried: this explanatory variable seems to be the main driver regarding both the probability of having an unsold painting and the auction price levels reached by sold works. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of its sufficiency is rejected and some problems related to the economic interpretation of the results arise. The whole analysis is carried out after creating a new dataset of 2817 transactions which took place at the most important auction houses between 1990 and 2006.
This paper investigates the Chinese mainland Stock Exchanges and their following interconnecting ... more This paper investigates the Chinese mainland Stock Exchanges and their following interconnecting features: savers' attitude towards stock investments, investors' trading behaviour and stock returns explanations. We evaluate the effectiveness of the recent efforts made by the Chinese authorities to improve the level of legal protections for shareholders and the opening-up of the Chinese Stock Markets to foreign investors. The whole analysis is carried out through a system of simultaneous equations. The main results are that Chinese shareholders and stock markets are mostly driven by emotional behaviour. Stock market returns are barely influenced by the overall chinese economic booming, but reveal the presence of speculative influences. Investors' behaviour, as well as general trading activities, hardly seems to be affected by the legal framework introduced by the national Authorities.
Although linear autoregressive models are useful to practitioners in different fields, often a no... more Although linear autoregressive models are useful to practitioners in different fields, often a nonlinear specification would be more appropriate in time series analysis. In general, there are many alternative approaches to nonlinearity modelling, one consists in assuming multiple regimes. Among the possible specifications that account for regime changes in the multivariate framework, smooth transition models are the most general, since they nest both linear and threshold autoregressive models. This paper introduces the starvars package which estimates and predicts the Vector Logistic Smooth Transition model in a very general setting which also includes predetermined variables. In comparison to the existing R packages, starvars offers the estimation of the Vector Smooth Transition model both by maximum likelihood and nonlinear least squares. The package allows also to test for nonlinearity in a multivariate setting and detect the presence of common breaks. Furthermore, the package computes multi-step-ahead forecasts. Finally, an illustration with financial time series is provided to show its usage.
Theoretically, financial risk tolerance depends upon different dimensions of risk. Some commentat... more Theoretically, financial risk tolerance depends upon different dimensions of risk. Some commentators (Cordell, 2002) have defined the term ‘risk tolerance’ to mean a combination of both ‘risk attitude’ (how much risk I choose to take) and ‘risk capacity’ (how much risk I can afford to take) (Roszkowski et al.). The first empirical goal of this study is to compare levels of financial risk tolerance which are obtained through alternative measurements: a traditional financial risk tolerance test, a psychophysiological test and the analysis of real life financial decisions. When using the financial risk tolerance test, we rely upon the self-evaluation of individuals; the computation from this test returns a biased risk tolerance level (BR). The second tool should provide a more objective evaluation of risk tolerance, given the fact that it relies on risky choices influenced by spontaneous somatic responses; it should return an unbiased risk tolerance level (UR). Finally, we considered the real life financial decisions of individuals obtaining a measure of the risk tolerance effectively assumed (the real life risk, RLR). Therefore we have the chance to compare how coherent RLR is in relation to both BR and UR.
This paper proposes the evaluation of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) under a new learnin... more This paper proposes the evaluation of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) under a new learning mechanism where VAR learning dynamics is combined with the idea of testing the validity of the forward-looking model of inflation dynamics. The key assumption is that agents' perceived law of motion is a VAR whose parameters are updated by recursive least squares. Differently from standard adaptive learning methods, agents test sequentially the cross-equation restrictions that the NKPC imposes on the VAR as the information set increases. When the restrictions are not rejected agents learn under the restricted system and exploit the cross-equation restrictions to forecast inflation. It is thus possible to check how much and in which periods agents' beliefs are consistent with the restrictions of the theory. The empirical analysis on quarterly data on the euro area shows that the NKPC with negligible backward-looking parameter is not rejected when the model is evaluated over the period 1984-2005 under the proposed learning mechanism. The result, however, is not fully robust to specifications based on non stationary variables and points out that learning may represent a remarkable source of euro area inflation persistence but not its only determinant.
Abstract According to the most common financial theories, the price of a futures contract is alwa... more Abstract According to the most common financial theories, the price of a futures contract is always influenced by the spot price of its underlying asset (the cost-of-carry model) or by the expected future spot price conditional on information set (the asset-pricing theory). The aim of this paper is to analyze the dynamic relationship between spot and futures prices, and to establish if there is the possibility of a valid “period by period” prediction of the futures price conditional on the prediction of the spot price, and vice-versa. The empirical analysis is conducted on the two most important energy commodities, crude oil and natural gas, and on gold, the most important commodity used for risk hedging and investment during financial turmoil, paying particular attention to the exogeneity issue. We estimate a battery of recursive bivariate VAR models over a sample of daily spot and futures prices, ranging from January 1997 to May 2014. Our results show that some interactions between spot and futures prices clearly exist and they mainly depend on commodity type and futures contracts maturity. Thus, a strong exogeneity operates in the case of the natural gas, while this is not the case for the crude oil, where the exogeneity generally is weak and depends on the contract maturity. On the gold market the results show no possibility of a valid forecasting between spot and futures prices.
We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Corre... more We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) specification by Engle (2002), the generalised version by Cappiello et al. (2006), and of the cDCC model by Aielli(2013). We discuss how the gradient might be further extended by introducing elements related to the conditional variance parameters, and discuss the issue arising from the estimation of constrained and/or reparametrised versions of the model. A computational simulation compares analytical versus numerical gradients, with a view to parameter estimation; we find that analytical differentiation yields more efficiency and improved accuracy.
Considering the financial theory based on cost-of-carry model, a futures contract price is always... more Considering the financial theory based on cost-of-carry model, a futures contract price is always influenced by the spot price of its underlying asset, as long as the futures price is determined as the sum of the underlying asset's spot price and its cost of carrying or storing. The aim of this paper is to verify if there are dynamic connections between spot and futures prices as statued by the cost-of-carry model, and to identify the direction of causality.;The empirical analysis is conducted on three different commodity markets, namely crude oil, natural gas and gold. We estimate a battery of recursive bivariate VAR models over a sample of daily spot and futures prices ranging from January 1997 to September 2013. Using the recursive Grange-rcausality analysis, we show that some interactions between spot and futures prices clearly exist and they mainly depend on market type and futures contract's maturity.
Lo scopo di questo lavoro S duplice: da un lato si vuole suggerire una metodologia di implementaz... more Lo scopo di questo lavoro S duplice: da un lato si vuole suggerire una metodologia di implementazione di un modello computazionale per analizzare la nuova situazione istituzionale, mettendo in luce i problemi tecnici da affrontare, dall'altro si vogliono dare le prime indicazioni sulla direzione degli effetti delle manovre fiscali, soprattutto alla luce delle riforme che hanno cambiato i connotati del sistema fiscale italiano assegnando competenze di;spesa e importanti leve di gettito alle Regioni. Il modello proposto S un modello di equilibrio economico generale biregionale alla Hecksher-Ohlin. Dalle simulazioni si puo' concludere che il legislatore ha preferito non aggravare la forte sperequazione tra regioni ricche e regioni povere e pertanto ha disegnato il meccanismo di perequazione che annulla quasi completamente l'incentivo a fare politiche di concorrenza fiscale verso il basso: se le regioni che decidessero di abbassare l'aliquota perderebbero gettito anche n...
The two main advantages deriving from the insertion of Phase Change Materials (PCM) inside the ex... more The two main advantages deriving from the insertion of Phase Change Materials (PCM) inside the external envelopes of buildings are lowering temperature peaks in internal environments and shifting their occurrence in time. In this contribution the data collected from a three-month experimental campaign are elaborated through a time series model with conditional heteroskedasticity, for the evaluation of the positive effects deriving from the insertion of a PCM layer in standard stratifications of dry assembled lightweight walls. In this work the performances of two different PCM containing stratifications are compared with the ones of a standard dry assembled lightweight wall. The statistical model in this paper is able of interpreting the long memory effects that affect the temperature time series of the experimental walls, even if with the use of a small number of parameters.
Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has b... more Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has been conducted in the framework of cointegration. However, parts of this approach have been questioned recently, as the adjustment mechanism may not follow a simple linear rule; another line of criticism points out that stationarity of the spreads is difficult to maintain empirically. In this paper, we analyse data on US bond yields by means of an augmented VAR specification which approximates a generic nonlinear adjustment model. We argue that nonlinearity captures macro information via the shape of the yield curve and thus provides an alternative explanation for some findings recently appeared in the literature. Moreover, we show how conditional heteroskedasticity can be taken into account via GARCH specifications for the conditional variance, either univariate and multivariate.
Journal of risk and financial management, Mar 4, 2020
We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Corre... more We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) specification by Engle (2002), the generalised version by Cappiello et al. (2006), and of the cDCC model by Aielli(2013). We discuss how the gradient might be further extended by introducing elements related to the conditional variance parameters, and discuss the issue arising from the estimation of constrained and/or reparametrised versions of the model. A computational simulation compares analytical versus numerical gradients, with a view to parameter estimation; we find that analytical differentiation yields more efficiency and improved accuracy.
Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has b... more Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (1987), empirical analysis of interest rates has been conducted in the framework of cointegration. However, parts of this approach have been questioned recently, as the adjustment mechanism may not follow a simple linear rule; another line of criticism points out that stationarity of the spreads is difficult to maintain empirically. In this paper, we analyse data on US bond yields by means of an augmented VAR specification which approximates a generic nonlinear adjustment model. We argue that nonlinearity captures macro information via the shape of the yield curve and thus provides an alternative explanation for some findings recently appeared in the literature. Moreover, we show how conditional heteroskedasticity can be taken into account via GARCH specifications for the conditional variance, either univariate and multivariate.
The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, May 1, 2011
This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contributi... more This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contribution to the existing literature is twofold concerning both the methodological and the conceptual aspects. From the former point of view, we use the two-stages Heckit model which allows us to take into account the sample selection bias deriving from the "buying" risk, that affects transactions at auction. From the latter point of view, we have found that some sale characteristics such as auction house prestige and year of sale, are more important than the physical aspects of the paintings. Moreover, some artistic characteristics, the artist's name and their living status are also relevant. An estimation using pre-sale evaluation by experts has also been tried: this explanatory variable seems to be the main driver regarding both the probability of having an unsold painting and the auction price levels reached by sold works. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of its sufficiency is rejected and some problems related to the economic interpretation of the results arise. The whole analysis is carried out after creating a new dataset of 2817 transactions which took place at the most important auction houses between 1990 and 2006.
This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contributi... more This paper aims to model the auction prices of Italian contemporary art paintings. The contribution to the existing literature is twofold concerning both the methodological and the conceptual aspects. From the former point of view, we use the two-stages Heckit model which allows us to take into account the sample selection bias deriving from the "buying" risk, that affects transactions at auction. From the latter point of view, we have found that some sale characteristics such as auction house prestige and year of sale, are more important than the physical aspects of the paintings. Moreover, some artistic characteristics, the artist's name and their living status are also relevant. An estimation using pre-sale evaluation by experts has also been tried: this explanatory variable seems to be the main driver regarding both the probability of having an unsold painting and the auction price levels reached by sold works. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of its sufficiency is rejected and some problems related to the economic interpretation of the results arise. The whole analysis is carried out after creating a new dataset of 2817 transactions which took place at the most important auction houses between 1990 and 2006.
This paper investigates the Chinese mainland Stock Exchanges and their following interconnecting ... more This paper investigates the Chinese mainland Stock Exchanges and their following interconnecting features: savers' attitude towards stock investments, investors' trading behaviour and stock returns explanations. We evaluate the effectiveness of the recent efforts made by the Chinese authorities to improve the level of legal protections for shareholders and the opening-up of the Chinese Stock Markets to foreign investors. The whole analysis is carried out through a system of simultaneous equations. The main results are that Chinese shareholders and stock markets are mostly driven by emotional behaviour. Stock market returns are barely influenced by the overall chinese economic booming, but reveal the presence of speculative influences. Investors' behaviour, as well as general trading activities, hardly seems to be affected by the legal framework introduced by the national Authorities.
Although linear autoregressive models are useful to practitioners in different fields, often a no... more Although linear autoregressive models are useful to practitioners in different fields, often a nonlinear specification would be more appropriate in time series analysis. In general, there are many alternative approaches to nonlinearity modelling, one consists in assuming multiple regimes. Among the possible specifications that account for regime changes in the multivariate framework, smooth transition models are the most general, since they nest both linear and threshold autoregressive models. This paper introduces the starvars package which estimates and predicts the Vector Logistic Smooth Transition model in a very general setting which also includes predetermined variables. In comparison to the existing R packages, starvars offers the estimation of the Vector Smooth Transition model both by maximum likelihood and nonlinear least squares. The package allows also to test for nonlinearity in a multivariate setting and detect the presence of common breaks. Furthermore, the package computes multi-step-ahead forecasts. Finally, an illustration with financial time series is provided to show its usage.
Theoretically, financial risk tolerance depends upon different dimensions of risk. Some commentat... more Theoretically, financial risk tolerance depends upon different dimensions of risk. Some commentators (Cordell, 2002) have defined the term ‘risk tolerance’ to mean a combination of both ‘risk attitude’ (how much risk I choose to take) and ‘risk capacity’ (how much risk I can afford to take) (Roszkowski et al.). The first empirical goal of this study is to compare levels of financial risk tolerance which are obtained through alternative measurements: a traditional financial risk tolerance test, a psychophysiological test and the analysis of real life financial decisions. When using the financial risk tolerance test, we rely upon the self-evaluation of individuals; the computation from this test returns a biased risk tolerance level (BR). The second tool should provide a more objective evaluation of risk tolerance, given the fact that it relies on risky choices influenced by spontaneous somatic responses; it should return an unbiased risk tolerance level (UR). Finally, we considered the real life financial decisions of individuals obtaining a measure of the risk tolerance effectively assumed (the real life risk, RLR). Therefore we have the chance to compare how coherent RLR is in relation to both BR and UR.
This paper proposes the evaluation of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) under a new learnin... more This paper proposes the evaluation of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) under a new learning mechanism where VAR learning dynamics is combined with the idea of testing the validity of the forward-looking model of inflation dynamics. The key assumption is that agents' perceived law of motion is a VAR whose parameters are updated by recursive least squares. Differently from standard adaptive learning methods, agents test sequentially the cross-equation restrictions that the NKPC imposes on the VAR as the information set increases. When the restrictions are not rejected agents learn under the restricted system and exploit the cross-equation restrictions to forecast inflation. It is thus possible to check how much and in which periods agents' beliefs are consistent with the restrictions of the theory. The empirical analysis on quarterly data on the euro area shows that the NKPC with negligible backward-looking parameter is not rejected when the model is evaluated over the period 1984-2005 under the proposed learning mechanism. The result, however, is not fully robust to specifications based on non stationary variables and points out that learning may represent a remarkable source of euro area inflation persistence but not its only determinant.
Abstract According to the most common financial theories, the price of a futures contract is alwa... more Abstract According to the most common financial theories, the price of a futures contract is always influenced by the spot price of its underlying asset (the cost-of-carry model) or by the expected future spot price conditional on information set (the asset-pricing theory). The aim of this paper is to analyze the dynamic relationship between spot and futures prices, and to establish if there is the possibility of a valid “period by period” prediction of the futures price conditional on the prediction of the spot price, and vice-versa. The empirical analysis is conducted on the two most important energy commodities, crude oil and natural gas, and on gold, the most important commodity used for risk hedging and investment during financial turmoil, paying particular attention to the exogeneity issue. We estimate a battery of recursive bivariate VAR models over a sample of daily spot and futures prices, ranging from January 1997 to May 2014. Our results show that some interactions between spot and futures prices clearly exist and they mainly depend on commodity type and futures contracts maturity. Thus, a strong exogeneity operates in the case of the natural gas, while this is not the case for the crude oil, where the exogeneity generally is weak and depends on the contract maturity. On the gold market the results show no possibility of a valid forecasting between spot and futures prices.
We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Corre... more We provide the analytical gradient of the full model likelihood for the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) specification by Engle (2002), the generalised version by Cappiello et al. (2006), and of the cDCC model by Aielli(2013). We discuss how the gradient might be further extended by introducing elements related to the conditional variance parameters, and discuss the issue arising from the estimation of constrained and/or reparametrised versions of the model. A computational simulation compares analytical versus numerical gradients, with a view to parameter estimation; we find that analytical differentiation yields more efficiency and improved accuracy.
Considering the financial theory based on cost-of-carry model, a futures contract price is always... more Considering the financial theory based on cost-of-carry model, a futures contract price is always influenced by the spot price of its underlying asset, as long as the futures price is determined as the sum of the underlying asset's spot price and its cost of carrying or storing. The aim of this paper is to verify if there are dynamic connections between spot and futures prices as statued by the cost-of-carry model, and to identify the direction of causality.;The empirical analysis is conducted on three different commodity markets, namely crude oil, natural gas and gold. We estimate a battery of recursive bivariate VAR models over a sample of daily spot and futures prices ranging from January 1997 to September 2013. Using the recursive Grange-rcausality analysis, we show that some interactions between spot and futures prices clearly exist and they mainly depend on market type and futures contract's maturity.
Lo scopo di questo lavoro S duplice: da un lato si vuole suggerire una metodologia di implementaz... more Lo scopo di questo lavoro S duplice: da un lato si vuole suggerire una metodologia di implementazione di un modello computazionale per analizzare la nuova situazione istituzionale, mettendo in luce i problemi tecnici da affrontare, dall'altro si vogliono dare le prime indicazioni sulla direzione degli effetti delle manovre fiscali, soprattutto alla luce delle riforme che hanno cambiato i connotati del sistema fiscale italiano assegnando competenze di;spesa e importanti leve di gettito alle Regioni. Il modello proposto S un modello di equilibrio economico generale biregionale alla Hecksher-Ohlin. Dalle simulazioni si puo' concludere che il legislatore ha preferito non aggravare la forte sperequazione tra regioni ricche e regioni povere e pertanto ha disegnato il meccanismo di perequazione che annulla quasi completamente l'incentivo a fare politiche di concorrenza fiscale verso il basso: se le regioni che decidessero di abbassare l'aliquota perderebbero gettito anche n...
The two main advantages deriving from the insertion of Phase Change Materials (PCM) inside the ex... more The two main advantages deriving from the insertion of Phase Change Materials (PCM) inside the external envelopes of buildings are lowering temperature peaks in internal environments and shifting their occurrence in time. In this contribution the data collected from a three-month experimental campaign are elaborated through a time series model with conditional heteroskedasticity, for the evaluation of the positive effects deriving from the insertion of a PCM layer in standard stratifications of dry assembled lightweight walls. In this work the performances of two different PCM containing stratifications are compared with the ones of a standard dry assembled lightweight wall. The statistical model in this paper is able of interpreting the long memory effects that affect the temperature time series of the experimental walls, even if with the use of a small number of parameters.
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Papers by Giulio Palomba