This article aims at constructing a new method for testing the statistical significance of seasonal fluctuations for non-stationary processes. The constructed test is based on a method of subsampling and on the spectral theory of Almost Periodically Correlated (APC) time series. In the article we consider an equation of a nonstationary process, containing a component which includes seasonal fluctuations and business cycle fluctuations, both described by an almost periodic function. We build subsampling test justifying the significance of frequencies obtained from the Fourier representation of the unconditional expectation of the process.
The empirical usefulness of the constructed test is examined for selected macroeconomic data. The article studies survey indicators of economic climate in industry, retail trade and consumption for European countries.
This study examines whether the lowering interest-rate environment in CEE countries since the early 2000’s increased bank risk-taking behaviour. We employ 6,979 annual observations from the Bankscope database over the period 1997‒2011 and find a positive relationship between bank risk-taking, measured by risk assets, and interest rates. On the contrary, there is a negative relationsh ipbetween non-performing loans and interest rates. These results are robust across a number of different specifications that account,inter alia, for the potential endogeneity of interest rates and/or the dynamics of bank risk. Moreover, we provide evidence that these findings are mainly driven by the banking sector of the Russian Federation rather than that of the rest CEE countries.
In the article the author analyses the impact of the Financial Crisis, especially the Greek fiscal one, on the sCDS prices in Europe. The aim of the article is to assess the ability of the sCDS premia to price the risk of countries before and during the Greek crisis. The author analyses sCDS premia of maturity 10 years together with the so called bond-spreads, i.e. the spreadsbetween the countries’ bond indexes and the risk free rate of the region (in our case it was the yield of German bonds of corresponding maturity – 10 years).The idea was to check whether there occurred any discrepancies in the risk valuation via the two measures, as a consequence of the Greek crisis. The data is taken daily and covers the period of 2008‒2012. Based upon the results obtained in the research we conclude that the Greek crisis indeed influenced the relationships between the two measures of risk, however the degree of the influence was different in different countries. The relationships between the two measures of risk were totally broken only in the case of Greece, while in the other countries the relationships either were not distorted or had been broken already at the beginning of the financial crisis (2008/2009). The Greek problems were indeed reflected in volatilities of all analysed instruments; however triggering the credit event affected only Greek bonds dynamics.