Ralf Becker

• PhD
• Professor at The University of Manchester

The technique of classroom flipping has started to make an impact on the teaching of economics. An important element of classroom flipping is that elements of active learning (e.g. games, experiments and polling) are brought into the classroom setting and that content delivery is moved (at least partially) from the classroom to the virtual learning...

This paper introduces a multivariate kernel based forecasting tool for the prediction of variance-covariance matrices of stock returns. The method introduced allows for the incorporation of macroeconomic variables into the forecasting process of the matrix without resorting to a decomposition of the matrix. The model makes use of similarity forecas...

This paper studies the globalisation of CPI inflation by analysing core, energy and food components, testing for structural breaks in the relationships between domestic inflation and a corresponding country-specific foreign inflation series at the monthly frequency for OECD countries. The iterative methodology employed separates coefficient and var...

Many market participants in Australia Electricity Market had cast doubts on whether the pre-dispatch process in the electricity market is able to give them good and timely quantity and price information. In a study by [11], they observed a significant bias (mainly indicating that the pre-dispatch process tends to underestimate spot price outcomes),...

Techniques for evaluating and selecting multivariate volatility forecasts are not yet understood as well as their univariate counterparts. This paper considers the ability of different loss functions to discriminate between a set of competing forecasting models which are subsequently applied in a portfolio allocation context. It is found that a lik...

This article documents the business cycle characteristics of the Chinese economy by adopting both nonparametric and parametric methodologies. The two approaches are applied to relevant macroeconomics indicators – Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Industrial Production (IP) indices – aiming to investigate the growth cycle (deviation cycle). We provid...

Energy prices are highly volatile and often feature unexpected spikes. It is the purpose of this paper to examine whether the occurrence of these extreme price events display any regularities that can be captured using an econometric model. Here we treat these price events as point processes and apply Hawkes and PAR models to model the dynamics in...

SUMMARYA new procedure is proposed for modelling nonlinearity of a smooth transition form, by allowing the transition variable to be a weighted function of lagged observations. This function depends on two unknown parameters and requires specification of the maximum lag only. Nonlinearity testing for this specification uses a search over a plausibl...

Numerous authors have suggested that the price-earnings (P/E) ratio can be used to predict the future movement of stock prices. Such arguments are based on the belief that P/E ratios are mean-reverting. However, are the S&P P/E ratios really mean reverting? A review of the literature finds arguments on both sides, but the issue of mean reversion ha...

Techniques for evaluating and selecting multivariate volatility forecasts are not yet as well understood as their univariate counterparts. This paper considers the ability of different loss functions to discriminate between a competing set of forecasting models which are subsequently applied in a portfolio allocation context. It is found that a lik...

Forecasts generated by time series models traditionally place greater weight on more recent observations. This paper develops an alternative semi-parametric method for forecasting that does not rely on this convention and applies it to the problem of forecasting asset return volatility. In this approach, a forecast is a weighted average of historic...

The forecasting of variance-covariance matrices is an important issue. In recent years an increasing body of literature has focused on multivariate models to forecast this quantity. This paper develops a nonparametric technique for generating multivariate volatility forecasts from a weighted average of historical volatility and a broader set of mac...

This paper presents a simple forecasting technique for variance covariance matrices. It relies significantly on the contribution of Chiriac and Voev (2010) who propose to forecast elements of the Cholesky decomposition which recombine to form a positive definite forecast for the variance covariance matrix. The method proposed here combines this met...

This paper empirically analyses the interest rate transmission mechanism in the United Kingdom by exploring the pass-through of the official rate to the money market rate and of the market rate to the mortgage rate. Potential asymmetries, due to financial market conditions and monetary policy, lead to the use of a nonlinear threshold error-correcti...

This paper considers an important practical problem in testing time-series data for nonlinearity in mean, namely, the distortion in the size of the test encountered if the the data are heteroskedastic. It is shown that using a heteroskedastic consistent auxiliary regression together with the wild bootstrap is an effective way of dealing with the pr...

Much research has investigated the differences between option implied volatilities and econometric model-based forecasts. Implied volatility is a market determined forecast, in contrast to model-based forecasts that employ some degree of smoothing of past volatility to generate forecasts. Implied volatility has the potential to reflect information...

While a number of unit root testing procedures have been developed to account for nonlinearity under the alternative hypothesis of stationarity, almost all available tests assume a linear DGP under the unit root null hypothesis. This paper establishes some theoretical results relating to the inclusion of nonlinear terms in an ADF regression and pro...

We study the functioning of secured and unsecured interbank markets in the presence of credit risk. The model generates empirical predictions that are in line with developments during the 2007–09 financial crisis. Interest rates decouple across secured and unsecured markets following an adverse shock to credit risk. The scarcity of underlying colla...

Changes in variance, or volatility, over time can be modeled using the approach based on autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity. Another approach is to model variance as an unobserved stochastic process. Although it is not easy to obtain the exact likelihood function for such stochastic variance models, they tie in closely with developments...

Forecasting volatility has received a great deal of research attention, with the relative performances of econometric model based and option implied volatility forecasts often being considered. While many studies find that implied volatility is the pre-ferred approach, a number of issues remain unresolved, including the relative merit of combining...

This paper contributes to our understanding of the informational content of implied volatility. Here we examine whether the S&P 500 implied volatility index (VIX) contains any information relevant to future volatility beyond that available from model based volatility forecasts. It is argued that this approach differs from the traditional forecast e...

This paper presents a GARCH type volatility model with a time-varying unconditional volatility which is a function of macroeconomic information. It is an extension of the SPLINE GARCH model proposed by Engle and Rangel (2005). The advantage of the model proposed in this paper is that the macroeconomic information available (and/or forecasts)is used...

This paper considers an important practical problem in testing time-series data for nonlinearity in mean. Most popular tests reject the null hypothesis of linearity too frequently if the the data are heteroskedastic. Two approaches to redressing this size distortion are considered, both of which have been proposed previously in the literature altho...

During periods of market stress, electricity prices can rise dramatically. Electricity retailers cannot pass these extreme prices on to customers because of retail price regulation. Improved prediction of these price spikes therefore is important for risk management. This paper builds a time-varying-probability Markov-switching model of Queensland...

Much research has addressed the relative performance of option implied volatilities and econometric model based forecasts in terms of forecasting asset return volatility. The general theme to come from this body of work is that implied volatility is a superior forecast. Some authors attribute this to the fact that option markets use a wider informa...

The paper develops a simple method that can be used to test for a time-varying intercept and to approximate its form. The method uses a Fourier approximation to capture any variation in the intercept term. As such, the issue becomes one of deciding which frequencies to include in the approximation. The test has good power to detect multiple structu...

Macroeconomic variables have been shown to display a wide variety of structural breaks of unknown number, duration and form. This poses a challenge since improperly modelled breaks can result in a seriously misspecified model. In this paper, we develop a new test for stationarity that approximates the unknown form of structural breaks using a selec...

Implied volatility is often considered to represent a market's prediction of future volatility. If such a market was to generate efficient volatility forecasts, implied volatility should reflect all relevant conditioning information. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether a publicly available and commonly used implied volatility index, t...

A new test for time-dependent parameters is proposed. The Trig-test is based on a trigonometric expansion to approximate the unknown functional form of the variation in the parameters concerned. It is shown to have the correct empirical size and excellent power to detect structural breaks and stochastic parameter variation. The appropriate use of t...

Implied volatility generated from observed option prices reflects market expectations of future volatility. This paper determines whether or not, implied volatilities, and hence market expectations, contain any genuinely forward looking information not already captured by historical information. Historical information is represented by current leve...

The paper develops a test with the null of stationarity that allows for the possibility of an unknown number of structural breaks, or other nonlinearities, in the data-generating process. The test is based on the fact that the behavior of a breaking process can often be captured using a single frequency component of a Fourier approximation. Hence,...

This paper examines whether or not a discrete-time econometric test for nonlinearity in mean may be used in cases where the data are believed to be generated in continuous time. It is demonstrated that appropriate bootstrapping techniques are required to yield a test statistic with sensible statistical properties. The technique is demonstrated by u...

This paper proposes a new test based on a Fourier series expansion to approximate the unknown functional form of a nonlinear time-series model. The test specifically allows for structural breaks, seasonal parameters and time-varying parameters. The test is shown to have very good size and power properties. However, it is not especially good in dete...

In dieser Arbeit wird die Schätzmethode der Verallgemeinerten Momente (Generalized Method of Moments - GMM) vorgestellt. Neben der formalen Darstellung wird besonderes Augenmerk auf die notwendige Schätzung der Gewichtungsmatrix und auf Testmethoden im Rahmen der GMM gelegt. Anhand einer Schätzung des stochastischen Prozesses des kurzfristigen Zins...

In dieser Arbeit wird anhand eines Ratio-Form-Ansatzes gezeigt, wie sich Unterschiede in den aggregierten Konsumfunktionen der 10 westdeutschen Bundesländer ökonometrisch darstellen lassen. Mit Hilfe eines Chow-Tests, der Berechnung kurz- und langfristiger Konsumquoten und verschiedener Arbeitsmarkt- und Inflationsvariablen lassen sich regionale Un...

There is much literature that deals with modeling and forecasting asset return volatility. However, much of this research does not attempt to explain variations in the level of volatility. Movements in volatility are often linked to trading volume or frequency, as a reflection of underlying information flow. This paper considers whether the state o...

Much research has addressed the relative performance of option implied volatilities and econometric model based forecasts in terms of forecasting asset return volatility. The general pattern is that implied volatility is a superior forecast. Some authors attribute this to the fact that option markets use a wider information set when forming their f...