The rise of bond financing in EuropeUsing large panel data of public and private firms, this paper dissects the growth of bond financing in the Euro Area through the lens of the cross-section of issuers. In recent years, the composition of bond issuers has shifted, with the entry of many smaller...

Testing and estimating the rank of a matrix of estimated parameters is key in a large variety of econometric modelling scenarios. This paper describes general methods to test for and estimate the rank of a matrix, and provides details on a variety of modelling scenarios in the econometrics...

We consider the problem of portfolio selection within the classical Markowitz meanvariance framework, reformulated as a constrained least-squares regression problem. We propose to add to the objective function a penalty proportional to the sum of the absolute values of the portfolio weights....

In this study we combine clustering techniques with a moving window algorithm in order to filter financial market data outliers. We apply the algorithm to a set of financial market data which consists of 25 series selected from a larger dataset using a cluster analysis technique taking into...

We evaluate residual projection strategies in the context of a large-scale macro model of the euro area and smaller benchmark time-series models. The exercises attempt to measure the accuracy of model-based forecasts simulated both out-of-sample and in-sample. Both exercises incorporate...

This paper tests the expectations hypothesis (EH) of the term structure of interest rates in US data, using spectral regression techniques that allow us to consider different frequency bands. We find a positive relation between the term spread and the change in the long-term interest rate in a...

This paper shows how the problem of mean-downside risk portfolio allocation can be cast in terms of penalized least squares (PLS). The penalty is given by a power function of the returns below a certain threshold. We derive the asymptotic properties of the PLS estimator, allowing for possible...

A crucial but often ignored element of inflation expectations is the amount of perceived inflation risk. This paper estimates the degree of uncertainty and asymmetry in the probability forecasts of the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) using a new methodology. The main conclusion from our...

This paper introduces the concepts of time-specific weak and strong cross section dependence. A double-indexed process is said to be cross sectionally weakly dependent at a given point in time, t, if its weighted average along the cross section dimension (N) converges to its expectation in...