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This paper investigates the empirical relevance of different unemployment theories in three major economies, namely the UK, the US and Japan, by estimating the degree of dependence in the unemployment series. Both univariate and multivariate long memory methods are used. The results vary depending on whether the former or the latter approach is followed. Specifically, when taking a univariate approach, the unit root null cannot be rejected in case of the UK and Japanese unemployment series, and some degree of mean reversion (d < 1) is found in the case of the US unemployment rate. When applying multivariate methods instead, higher orders of integration are still found for the UK and Japanese series, but the NAIRU hypothesis cannot be rejected in the case of the US.

This paper investigates the time-varying impact of oil price uncertainty on stock prices in China using weekly data on ten sectoral indices over the period January 1997 - February 2014. The estimation of a bivariate VAR-GARCH-in-mean model suggests that oil price volatility affects stock returns positively during periods characterised by demand-side shocks in all cases except the Consumer Services, Financials, and Oil and Gas sectors. The latter two sectors are found to exhibit a negative response to oil price uncertainty during periods with supply-side shocks instead. By contrast, the impact of oil price uncertainty appears to be insignificant during periods with precautionary demand shocks.

This paper analyses the effects of newspaper coverage of macro news on the spread between the yield on the 10-year German Bund and on sovereign bonds in eight countries belonging to the euro area (Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) using daily data for the period 1999 - 2014. The econometric analysis is based on the estimation of a VAR-GARCH model. The results can be summarized as follows. Negative news have significant positive effects on yield spreads in all PIIGS countries but Italy before September 2008; markets respond more to negative news, and their reaction has increased during the recent financial crisis. News volatility has a significant impact on yield spread volatility, the effects being more pronounced in the case of negative news and bigger in the most recent crisis period, especially in the PIIGS countries. Further, the conditional correlations between yield spreads and negative news are significant and positive, and their increase in absolute value during the financial crisis (especially in the PIIGS countries) indicates a higher sensitivity of yield spreads to negative releases.

This paper investigates the statistical features and the macroeconomic determinants of youth unemployment in a number of European countries. First, it explores its short and long memory properties by estimating both autoregressive and fractional integration models. This type of analysis sheds light on the degree of persistence of the series, and on whether policy actions are required for highly persistent series. Second, it investigates the main determinants of youth unemployment in Europe by estimating fractional cointegration models. The evidence suggests that this series is highly persistent in all the countries examined, and that in some of them there is a statistically significant long-run equilibrium relationship linking it to macroeconomic variables such as GDP and inflation.

This paper examines short-term price reactions after one-day abnormal price changes and whether they create exploitable profit opportunities in various financial markets. A t-test confirms the presence of overreactions and also suggests that there is an "inertia anomaly", i.e. after an overreaction day prices tend to move in the same direction for some time. A trading robot approach is then used to test two trading strategies aimed at exploiting the detected anomalies to make abnormal profits. The results suggest that a strategy based on counter-movements after overreactions does not generate profits in the FOREX and the commodity markets, but it is profitable in the case of the US stock market. By contrast, a strategy exploiting the "inertia anomaly" produces profits in the case of the FOREX and the commodity markets, but not in the case of the US stock market.

This paper analyses the effects of newspaper coverage of macro news on stock returns in eight countries belonging to the euro area (Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain) using daily data for the period 1994 - 2013. The econometric analysis is based on the estimation of a VAR-GARCH-in-mean model. The results can be summarised as follows. Positive (negative) news have significant positive (negative) effects on stock returns in all cases. Their volatility has a significant impact on both stock returns and volatility; specifically, an increase in news volatility is always associated with a decrease in stock returns. Markets are particularly responsive to negative news, and the reaction is bigger in the PIIGS countries, and during the recent crisis period.

A canonical two country-two good model with standard preferences does not address three classic international macroeconomic puzzles as well as two well-known asset pricing puzzles. Specifically, under financial autarky, it does not account for the high real exchange rate (RER) volatility relative to consumption volatility (RER volatility puzzle), the negative RER-consumption differentials correlation (Backus-Smith anomaly), the relatively low cross-country consumption correlation (consumption correlation puzzle), the low risk-free rate (risk-free rate puzzle) and the high equity risk premium (equity premium puzzle) in the data. In this paper, we show that instead a two country-two good model with recursive preferences, international complete markets and correlated long-run innovations can address all five puzzles for a relatively large range of parameter values, specifically in the case of the US and China. Therefore, in contrast to other IBC models, its performance does not rely on any financial market imperfections.

This paper examines the impact of exchange rate uncertainty on different components of portfolio flows, namely equity and bond flows, as well as the dynamic linkages between exchange rate volatility and the variability of these two types of flows. Specifically, a bivariate GARCH-BEKK-in-mean model is estimated using bilateral data for the US vis-à-vis Australia, the UK, Japan, Canada, the euro area, and Sweden over the period 1988:01-2011:12. The results indicate that the effect of exchange rate uncertainty on equity flows is negative in the euro area, the UK and Sweden, and positive in Australia, whilst it is negative in all countries except Canada (where it is positive) in the case of bond flows. Under the assumption of risk aversion, this suggests that exchange rate uncertainty induces a home bias and causes investors to reduce their financing activities to maximise returns and minimize exposure to uncertainty. Furthermore, since exchange rate volatility and the variability of flows are interlinked, exchange rate or credit controls on these flows can be used to pursue economic and financial stability.

This paper analyses monthly hours worked in the US over the sample period 1939m1 - 2011m10 using a cyclical long memory model; this is based on Gegenbauer processes and characterised by autocorrelations decaying to zero cyclically and at a hyperbolic rate along with a spectral density that is unbounded at a non-zero frequency. The reason for choosing this specification is that the periodogram of the hours worked series has a peak at a frequency away from zero. The empirical results confirm that this model works extremely well for hours worked, and it is then employed to analyse their relationship with technology shocks. It is found that hours worked increase on impact in response to a technology shock (though the effect dies away rapidly), consistently with Real Business Cycle (RBC) models.

This paper proposes new metrics for the process of price discovery on the main electronic trading platform for euro-denominated government securities. Analysing price data on daily transactions for 107 bonds over a period of twenty-seven months, we find a greater degree of price leadership of the dominant market when our measures (as opposed to the traditional price discovery metrics) are used. We also present unambiguous evidence that a market's contribution to price discovery is crucially affected by the level of trading activity. The implications of these empirical findings are discussed in the light of the debate about the possible restructuring of the regulatory framework for the Treasury bond market in Europe

By estimating a staggered price model over the period 1980q1-2010q2, this paper documents that, after the euro changeover, Italian retailers have increased the number of price adjustments, which has translated into a higher inflation rate, with a detrimental effect on the competitiveness of the Italian economy.

This paper analyses two well-known features of interest rates, namely their time dependence and their cyclical structure. Specifically, it focuses on the monthly Euribor rate, using monthly data from January 1994 to May 2011. Models based on fractional integration at the long run or zero frequency, although adequately describing the persistent behaviour of the series, do not take into account its cyclical structure. Therefore, a more general cyclical fractional model is considered. Future directions for research in this context are also discussed.

In this paper we analyse the short- and long-run relationship between employment growth, inflation and output growth in Phillips' tradition. For this purpose we apply FMOLS, DOLS, PMGE, MGE, DFE, and VECM methods to a nonstationary heterogeneous dynamic panel including annual data for 119 countries over the period 1970-2010, and also carry out multivariate Granger causality tests. The empirical results strongly support the existence of a single cointegrating relationship between employment growth, inflation and output growth with bidirectional causality between employment growth and inflation as well as output growth, giving support to Phillips' Golden Triangle theory.

This paper estimates a tri-variate VAR-GARCH(1,1)-in-mean model to examine linkages between the stock markets of three Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), specifically the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and both the UK and Russia. The adopted framework allows to analyse interdependence by estimating volatility spillovers, and also contagion by testing for possible shifts in the transmission of volatility following the introduction of the euro and EU accession. Further evidence on possible changes in the transmission mechanism (namely, on whether there is contagion) can be obtained by examining the conditional correlations implied by the estimated model over different time periods. The empirical findings suggest that there is significant co-movement (interdependence) of these CEEC markets with both the Russian and the UK ones. Furthermore, whilst the introduction of the euro has had mixed effects, EU accession has resulted in an increase in volatility spillovers between the three CEECs considered and the UK (contagion).