ARCH in the G7 Equity Markets: A Speculative Explanation

Abstract

This paper explores whether speculative activity can,in practice,generate the ARCH- type behavior found in .nancial time series.Specifically,G7 equity marke indices are examined for evidence of a dynamic whereby speculative interest is self-sustaining, that is,markets can become 'hot'. A straightforward model,taken from Faruqee and Redding [9 ],generates some testable implications of the idea.Tests of the model on the data show that not only does he model offer an explanation for volatility clustering,but also can be considered a statistical improvement on standard GARCH representations.