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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The debate on the forecasting ability in economics of non-linear models has a long history, and the Great Recession provides us with an opportunity for a re-assessment of the forecasting performance of several classes of non-linear models, widely used in applied macroeconomic research. In this...

We consider the channel consisting in transferring the credit risk associated with refinancing operations between financial institutions to market participants. In particular, we analyze liquidity and volatility premia on the French government debt securities market, since these assets are used...

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...

We examine the effects of collateral provision as a potential channel between funding liquidity tensions and the scarcity of market liquidity. This channel consists in transferring the credit risk associated with refinancing operations between financial institutions to market participants that...