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By using a nonlinear VAR model, we investigate whether the response of the US stock and housing markets to uncertainty shocks depends on financial conditions. Our model allows us to change the response of the US financial markets to volatility shocks in periods of normal and financial distress. We find strong evidence that uncertainty shocks have adverse effects on the US financial markets, irrespective of financial conditions. Moreover, our empirical results show that the rebound in US housing prices, which fell sharply in the economic turmoil, is state-dependent. This reflects the Fed's expansionary monetary policy to stabilize the US housing market. Furthermore, our findings reveal that economic agents who closely monitor the impact of uncertainty on the US stock and housing markets should also consider financial frictions in the US economy.

We propose a new Sharpe ratio index obtained from return and volatility spillover indices to individual assets from the whole financial system. We use our new approach to shed light on a new perspective on a hot topic examining the safe-haven assets after Covid-19. To do that, we compare both hedge and safe-haven properties of gold, Bitcoin, and crude oil against G-7 stock markets by using daily return and volatility data from September 2013 to October 2021. Our empirical findings show that the hedging effectiveness of gold, Bitcoin, and crude oil varies overtime before the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, according to our analysis results, only Bitcoin acts as a safe haven against G-7 stock markets during most of the Covid-19 pandemic time.

This study examines the monetary policy effectiveness of five major Asian countries (China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and South Korea) using a quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) model-based spillover estimation approach of Balcilar et al. (2020b) at different quantile paths. To do this, we first obtain the spillover index from interest rate to industrial production and consumer price index under the high and low levels of uncertainty. The full sample results from our analysis provide partial supporting evidence for the economic theory, which asserts that monetary policy efficiency must fall during periods of high economic uncertainty. Furthermore, this approach also allows us to uncover asymmetric effects of economic policy uncertainty and lending rate on macroeconomic indicators. The impacts of interest rate and domestic and foreign (US, EU) uncertainty shocks on major Asian markets present significant asymmetric characteristics. Moreover, our time-varying results suggest that monetary policy shocks are more effective and potent on Asian economies during very low and very high uncertain times than normal economic periods.

This study empirically examines the fragility of five major Asian economies (China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and South Korea) to economic policy uncertainty (EPU) of US and EU, and oil prices in different state of the economies. To investigate these dynamics, we use the relative tail dependence by means of the spillover index of Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012) obtained from Quantile Vector Autoregressive (QVAR) model, a robust and semiparametric model, which does not require specification of the full distribution of error terms. The distinguishing feature of our approach from the previous studies is the determination of sign and intensity of asymmetric spillover dynamics from external shocks to Asian economies and variables covering a wide range of macroeconomic aspects. Our results indicate that the spillover indices from EPU and oil price shocks to Asian economies significantly vary across quantiles. The results from sub-sample analysis show that the US EPU has an asymmetric effect on macro variables of China, Hong Kong, and South Korea during the quantitative easing period (QE) and the reverse QE (RQE) periods while the EU EPU makes Asian markets vulnerable during the Eurozone debt crisis. The large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs) of ECB and BoJ seem to reduce Asian market fragilities after 2015. Last but not least, we get partial evidence to support an asymmetric effect of the crude oil shocks on some Asian markets.

In this paper we have examined the unemployment rate series in Turkey by using long memory models and in particular employing fractionally integrated techniques. Our results suggest that unemployment in Turkey is highly persistent, with orders of integration equal to or higher than 1 in most cases. This implies lack of mean reversion and permanence of the shocks. We found evidence in favor of mean reversion in the case of female unemployment and this happens for all the groups of non-agricultural, rural, urban and youth unemployment series. The possibility of non-linearities are observed only in the case of female unemployment and the degree of persistence is higher in the cases of female and youth unemployment series. Important policy implications emerge from our empirical results. Labor and macroeconomic policies will most likely have long lasting effects on the unemployment rates.

This article explores the long-run relationship between unemployment rate and labor force participation rate in Canada. The cointegration analysis vindicates the existence of a long-run relationship between these two variables. This finding leads us to doubt the pertinence of the unemployment invariance hypothesis for Canada. This is consistent with the empirical studies for Japan, Sweden and the United States, but contradicts the empirical studies for Australia, Romania and Turkey. There are contradictory studies for the United Kingdom.

This article explores the long-run relationship between unemployment rate and labor force participation rate in Canada. The cointegration analysis vindicates the existence of a long-run relationship between these two variables. This finding leads us to doubt the pertinence of the unemployment invariance hypothesis for Canada. This is consistent with the empirical studies for Japan, Sweden and the United States, but contradicts the empirical studies for Australia, Romania and Turkey. There are contradictory studies for the United Kingdom.