Financial analysts typically estimate volatilities and correlations from monthly or higher frequency returns when determining the optimal composition of a portfolio. Although it is widely acknowledged that these measures are not necessarily stationary across samples, most analysts assume...

This chapter examines the problems of dealing with trending type data when there is uncertainty over whether or not we really have unit roots in the data. This uncertainty is practical – for many macroeconomic and financial variables theory does not imply a unit root in the data however unit...

Many statistical applications require the forecast of a random variable of interest over several periods into the future. The sequence of individual forecasts, one period at a time, is called a path forecast, where the term path refers to the sequence of individual future realizations of the...

This chapter summarizes recent literature on asymptotic inference about forecasts. Both analytical and simulation based methods are discussed. The emphasis is on techniques applicable when the number of competing models is small. Techniques applicable when a large number of models is compared to...

This paper evaluates inflation forecasts made by Norges Bank which is a successful forecast targeting central bank. It is expected that Norges Bank produces inflation forecasts that are on average better than other forecasts, both "naive" forecasts, and forecasts from econometric models outside...

The substantial fluctuations in oil prices in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have highlighted the importance of tail events in the global market for crude oil which call for careful risk assessment. In this paper we focus on forecasting tail risks in the...

Historically, time series forecasts of economic variables have used only a handful of predictor variables, while forecasts based on a large number of predictors have been the province of judgmental forecasts and large structural econometric models. The past decade, however, has seen considerable...

Evidence in favor of the monetary model of exchange rate determination for the South African Rand is, at best, mixed. A co-integrating relationship between the nominal exchange rate and monetary fundamentals forms the basis of the monetary model. With the econometric literature suggesting that...

The financial econometrics literature includes several Multivariate GARCH models where the model parameter matrices depend on a clustering of financial assets. Those classes might be defined a priori or data-driven. When the latter approach is followed, one method for deriving asset groups is...