Fractional integration in agricultural futures price volatilities revisited

Jin and Frechette (2004) examined the degree to which agricultural price volatilities exhibited evidence of fractional integration and concluded it was important to consider both long-run and short-run memory when modeling conditional variances. The purpose of this note is to revisit the issue using new methods and techniques which generally reaffirm the view that return volatilities are fractionally integrated and conditionally heteroskedastic, with many exhibiting significant leverage effects, a result not previously reported.     

Persistence in U.S. State Unemployment Rates

Romero‐Ávila and Usabiaga (2007) find that many U.S. state unemployment rates are stationary, a result at odds with the traditional view that unemployment rates are path‐dependent and subject to shocks that have permanent effects. They base their results on multivariate unit root tests that provide for two breaks in mean. This note extends the analysis to directly examine whether the series were fractionally integrated. When no allowance is made for breaking means, the results suggest evidence in favor of hysteresis, an outcome that generally applies when one break in mean is considered. Allowing for two breaks demonstrates that the evidence in favor of the natural rate and the hysteresis hypotheses is temporally sensitive.     

Eliminating Required Reserves: Does it Matter?

The Government of Canada has recently announced its intention to eliminate reserve requirements at the chartered banks. This paper investigates whether required reserves are relevant for economic stabilization, using a prototype macro model characterized by both contemporaneous and legged bank reserve accounting. It is shown that required reserves have no affect on economic stability as long as the central bank can set the interest elasticity of the supply of bank reserves. This adjustment depends on the reserve accounting system in effect at the time of the regime shift. [431]