Researchers in finance very often rely on highly persistent Ñ nearly integrated Ñ explanatory variables to predict returns. This paper proposes to stand up to the usual problem of persistent regressor bias, by detrending the highly auto-correlated predictors. We find that the statistical...

We provide an economic valuation of the riskiness of risk models by directly measuring the impact of model risks (specification and estimation risks) on VaR estimates. We find that integrating the model risk into the VaR computations implies a substantial minimum correction of the order of...

The aim of this paper is to identify which factors explain why some countries are more prone to enjoy long durations of stability, while others experience crises in shorter intervals. To this end, we analyze the duration of stability periods between currency, debt, and banking crises from 1980...

Sharpe-like ratios have been traditionally used to measure the performances of portfolio managers. However, they are known to suffer major drawbacks. Among them, two are intricate : (1) they are relative to a peer's performance and (2) the best score is generally assumed to correspond to a...

We study the testability implications of public versus private consumption. The distinguishing feature of our approach is that we start from a revealed preference characterization of collectively rational behavior. Remarkably, we find that assumptions regarding the public or private nature of...

We provide a signal modality analysis to characterize and detect nonlinearity schemes in the US Industrial Production Index time series. The analysis is achieved by using the recently proposed "delay vector variance" (DVV) method, which examines local predictability of a signal in the phase...

We propose a transparent way of establishing a turning point chronology for the Euro-zone business cycle. Our analysis is achieved by exploiting the concept of recurrence plots, in particular distance plots, to characterize and detect turning points of the business cycle. Firstly, we apply the...

We provide a signal modality analysis to characterize and detect nonlinearity schemes in the US Industrial Production Index time series. The analysis is achieved by using the recently proposed ‘delay vector variance’ (DVV) method, which examines local predictability of a signal in the phase...

We provide a mathematical definition of fragility and antifragility as negative or positive sensitivity to a semi-measure of dispersion and volatility (a variant of negative or positive "vega") and examine the link to nonlinear effects. We integrate model error (and biases) into the fragile or...

The forecasting literature has identified three important and broad issues: the predictive content is unstable over time, in-sample and out-of-sample discordant results and the problematic statistical inference with highly persistent predictors. In this paper, we simultaneously address these...