Abstract

Journal of Actuarial Practice

Volume 5, Number 2, 1997


Actuarial Model Assumptions for Inflation, Equity Returns, and Interest Rates

Michael Sherris

Abstract

Though actuaries have developed several types of stochastic investment models for inflation, stock market returns, and interest rates, there are two commonly used in practice: autoregressive time series models with normally distributed errors, and autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) models. ARCH models are particularly suited when there is heteroscedasticity in inflation and interest rate series. In such cases nonnormal residuals are found in the empirical data. This paper examines whether Australian univariate inflation and interest rate data are consistent with autoregressive time series and ARCH model assumptions.

Key words and phrases: stochastic investment models, heteroscedasticity, unit roots, ARCH, inflation, interest rates

Michael Sherris
Faculty of Commerce and Economics,
University of New South Wales,
Sydney NSW 2052,
AUSTRALIA


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