Bradley T. Ewing

The Effects Of High School Athletic Participation On Education And Labor Market Outcomes

We introduce a simple allocation-of-time model to explain the high school athletic participation choice and the implications of this choice for educational and labor market outcomes. Four different factors that could explain athletic participation are identified in the context of this model. A variety of tests of the model are provided using two data sets: the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. We find some evidence that athletic participation directly affects wages and educational attainment. However, much of the effect of athletic participation on wages and educational attainment appears to reflect differences across individuals in ability or value of leisure.

Volatility transmission in the oil and natural gas markets

This research looks at how volatility in the oil and natural gas sectors changes over time and across markets. We empirically examine the univariate and bivariate time-series properties of oil and natural gas index returns, allowing for non-linearity in the variance of each series, as well as for the possibility that changes in volatility in one market may spill over to the other market. Patterns in volatility transmission emerge that may be of practical importance to financial market participants.

The response of real estate investment trust returns to macroeconomic shocks

Abstract To date, there has been considerable concern with evaluating the performance of real estate returns or determining the significance of fundamental state variables. This paper differs from the existing literature by identifying the response of real estate investment trust (REIT) returns to unexpected changes in the real output growth, the inflation, the default risk premium, and the stance of monetary policy utilizing the newly developed technique of generalized impulse response analysis. The generalized impulse response method does not impose a priori restrictions as to the relative importance each of these variables may play in the transmission process. The results show the extent and the magnitude of the relationship between the REIT market and macroeconomic factors. In particular, we find that shocks to monetary policy, economic growth, and inflation all lead to lower than expected returns, while a shock to the default risk premium is associated with higher future returns.

Forecasting wind speed with recurrent neural networks

This research presents a comparative analysis of the wind speed forecasting accuracy of univariate and multivariate ARIMA models with their recurrent neural network counterparts. The analysis utilizes contemporaneous wind speed time histories taken from the same tower location at five different heights above ground level. A unique aspect of the study is the exploitation of information contained in the wind histories for the various heights when producing forecasts of wind speed for the various heights. The findings indicate that multivariate models perform better than univariate models and that the recurrent neural network models outperform the ARIMA models. The results have important implications for a variety of engineering applications and business related operations.

The effects of macroeconomic shocks on sector-specific returns

The reliance on market and sector-specific indexes to evaluate managed portfolios and the popularity of index investing has increased the importance of understanding what leads to market movements, how long they may last, and how different sectors respond to macroeconomic shocks. This research is concerned with how shocks to macroeconomic variables affect five major S&P sector-specific stock market indexes. The paper employs the newly developed econometric technique of generalized impulse response analysis. The results identify the various responses of the sectors to unanticipated changes in some key macroeconomic variables. Asset prices are commonly believed to react sensitively to economic news. Daily experience seems to support the view that individual asset prices are influenced by a wide variety of unanticipated events and that some events have a more pervasive effect on asset prices than do others. (Chen et al. 1986, p. 386)

NAFTA and North American stock market linkages: an empirical note

Abstract This paper provides tests of the co-movement of the North American stock markets. We find over the post-US stock market crash period, 1987:11 through 1997:03, there is no cointegration present in these markets even when the passage of NAFTA is taken into account. The absence of cointegration allows us to draw several conclusions. First, the stock markets of North America are segmented. Second, the passage of NAFTA has not resulted in a greater integration of these stock markets. Finally, the data do not support the notion of a contagion effect from the 1987 U.S. stock market crash. In conclusion, the potential for long-run international diversification across the markets of North America still exists.

Estimating Volatility Persistence in Oil Prices Under Structural Breaks

Policy makers and financial market participants are interested in knowing how shocks affect the volatility of oil prices over time. We accurately compute the volatility persistence by incorporating endogenously determined structural breaks into a GARCH model. Contrary to previous findings, we find that oil shocks dissipate very quickly but have a strong initial impact. Understanding this behavior is not only important for derivative valuation and hedging decisions but for broader financial markets and the overall economy, for which there are significant consequences.

Government Expenditures and Revenues: Evidence from Asymmetric Modeling

In this article, we examine the relationship between U.S. federal revenues and expenditures while relaxing the assumption of a symmetric adjustment process underlying the conventional cointegration and error correction model. Threshold autoregression and momentum threshold autoregression models are used to ascertain the empirical link between the two variables of the budgetary process. Our results suggest that revenues and expenditures are cointegrated and that the adjustment process of the budgetary disequilibrium is asymmetric. The application of the asymmetric error correction model indicates that revenues and expenditures respond to the long-run requirements of the budgetary balance only when the budget is worsening.

The transmission of shocks among S&P indexes

Financial market participants pay particular attention to the behaviour of equity indexes due, in part, to the popularity of index investing and the reliance on market and sector indexes to evaluate managed portfolios. Five major S&P stock indexes are examined to determine their interrelationships and how shocks to one index are transmitted to the others. The paper employs the newly developed technique of generalized forecast error variance decomposition [Koop et al. (1996); Pesaran and Shin (1998)]. Unlike the traditional orthogonalized decomposition, the generalized version is invariant to the ordering of the variables in the underlying vector autoregression. The results provide important information about the transmission of shocks among these indexes.

Co-movements of Alaska North Slope and UK Brent crude oil prices

In order to study the inter-relationships of international crude oil markets, empirical analyses are used to investigate univariate and multivariate relationships between Alaska North Slope and UK Brent oil prices. Using monthly data from the period 1974–1996, the results show that both price series follow a random walk and that these oil markets share a long-run common trend. The empirical results suggest that the two markets are ‘unified’. That is, they are competitive, and there is price convergence in the markets.