Regime Changes and Financial Markets

Andrew Ang, Allan Timmermann

NBER Working Paper No. 17182
Issued in June 2011
NBER Program(s):   AP

Regime switching models can match the tendency of financial markets to often change their behavior abruptly and the phenomenon that the new behavior of financial variables often persists for several periods after such a change. While the regimes captured by regime switching models are identified by an econometric procedure, they often correspond to different periods in regulation, policy, and other secular changes. In empirical estimates, the regime switching means, volatilities, autocorrelations, and cross-covariances of asset returns often differ across regimes, which allow regime switching models to capture the stylized behavior of many financial series including fat tails, heteroskedasticity, skewness, and time-varying correlations. In equilibrium models, regimes in fundamental processes, like consumption or dividend growth, strongly affect the dynamic properties of equilibrium asset prices and can induce non-linear risk-return trade-offs. Regime switches also lead to potentially large consequences for investors' optimal portfolio choice.

Published: Andrew Ang & Allan Timmermann, 2012. "Regime Changes and Financial Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 313-337.

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Acknowledgments

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