Recent portfolio choice asset pricing and option valuation models highlight the importance of skewness and kurtosis. Since skewness and kurtosis are related to extreme variations they are also important for Value-at-Risk measurements. Our framework builds on a GARCH model with a condi-tional...

Since July 2003, the Banque de France has been using seasonally adjusted (SA) data for the monthly reporting of national monetary developments, with renewed statistical tools. Before the start of the single currency in 1999, the Banque de France already calculated seasonally adjusted data, using...

Recent portfolio choice asset pricing and option valuation models highlight the importance of skewness and kurtosis. Since skewness and kurtosis are related to extreme variations they are also important for Value-at-Risk measurements. Our framework builds on a GARCH model with a condi-tional...

We evaluate how departure from normality may affect the allocation of assets. A Taylor series expansion of the expected utility allows to focus on certain moments and to compute numerically the optimal portfolio allocation. A decisive advantage of this approach is that it remains operational...

The analysis of seasonality in economics and the development of new seasonal adjustment procedures have been following new directions in the last twenty years. We study this question through the work performed at the Banque de France (Monetary Statistic and Studies Directorate) to compile new...

This paper investigates the predictive accuracy of two alternative forecasting strategies, namely the forecast and information combinations. Theoretically, there should be no role for forecast combinations in a world where information sets can be instantaneously and costlessly combined. However,...

This paper introduces the new Monthly Index of Business Activity (MIBA) model of the Banque de France for forecasting France's GDP. As the previous versions, the model relies exclusively on data from the monthly business survey (EMC) conducted by the Banque de France. However, several major...

This paper proposes new bridge equations for the Monthly Index of Business Activity (MIBA) published by the Banque de France. The MIBA is a forecasting tool for the quarterly GDP growth in France both for the current quarter and the next quarter, originally based on the surveys in the industrial...

The aim of this paper is to build and estimate a macroeconomic model of credit risk for the French manufacturing sector. This model is based on Wilson's CreditPortfolioView model (1997a, 1997b); it enables us to simulate loss distributions for a credit portfolio for several macroeconomic...

Business surveys are an important element in the analysis of the short-term economic situation because of the timeliness and nature of the information they convey. Especially, surveys are often involved in econometric models in order to provide an early assessment of the current state of the...