SUMMARYMany asset prices, including exchange rates, exhibit periods of stability punctuated by infrequent, substantial, often one-sided adjustments. Statistically, this generates empirical distributions of exchange rate changes that exhibit high peaks, long tails, and skewness. This paper introduces a GARCH model, with a flexible parametric error distribution based on the exponential generalized beta (EGB) family of distributions. Applied to daily US dollar exchange rate data for six major currencies, evidence based on a comparison of actual and predicted higher-order moments and goodness-of-fit tests favours the GARCH-EGB2 model over more conventional GARCH-t and EGARCH-t model alternatives, particularly for exchange rate data characterized by skewness.

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An examination of employment patterns in rural Utah counties suggests that those counties that primarily rely on tourism and recreation to maintain economic viability exhibit annual employment variability much greater than those counties that rely on alternative economic activity.Compared to long-run boomlbust employment cycles, which are prevalent in counties that rely on resource extraction, annual recreation, and tourism employment cycles, are at least as variable and of much shorter duration due to the seasonal nature of tourist visitation patterns. As a result, local infrastructure planning for an economy based on recreation and tourism will likely involve considerable fiscal stress unless counties are able to balance capital needs with inherent short-run employment variability. This may suggest a need for long-tenn capital finance subsidies to offset capital stress during peak employment seasons in some tourist-based rural economies.