We propose a new family of density function that posses both flexibility and closed form expressions for moments and anti-derivatives, making them particularly appealing for applications. We illustrate its usefulness by applying our new family to obtain density forecasts of U.S. inflation. Our...

We argue that the current framework for predictive ability testing (e.g., West, 1996) is not necessarily useful for real-time forecast selection, i.e., for assessing which of two competing forecasting methods will perform better in the future. We propose an alternative framework for...

We consider the problem of estimating the variance of the partial sums of a stationary time series that has either long memory, short memory, negative/intermediate memory, or is the first-difference of such a process. The rate of growth of this variance depends crucially on the type of...

The well-known ARCH/GARCH models with normal errors account only partly for the degree of heavy tails empirically found in the distribution of financial returns series. Instead of resorting to an arbitrary nonnormal distribution for the ARCH/GARCH residuals we propose a different viewpoint via a...

The quest for the ‘best’ heavy-tailed distribution for ARCH/GARCH residuals appears to still be ongoing. In this connection, we propose a new distribution that arises in a natural way as an outcome of an implicit model. The challenging application of prediction of squared returns is...

In this paper we compare the relative efficiency of different methods of forecasting the aggregate of spatially correlated variables. Small sample simulations confirm the asymptotic result that improved forecasting performance can be obtained by imposing a priori constraints on the amount of...

This paper proposes a method for comparing and combining conditional quantile forecasts based on the principle of 'encompassing'. Our test for conditional quantile forecast encompassing (CQFE) is a test of superior predictive ability, constructed as a Wald-type test on the coefficients of an...

This paper proposes and analyzes tests that can be used to compare the accuracy of alternative conditional density forecasts of a variable. The tests are also valid in the broader context of model selection based on out-of-sample predictive ability. We restrict attention to the case of density...

Many economic and econometric applications require the integration of functions lacking a closed form antiderivative, which is therefore a task that can only be solved by numerical methods. We propose a new family of probability densities that can be used as substitutes and have the property of...

The bootstrap is an increasingly popular method for performing statistical inference. This paper provides the theoretical foundation for using the bootstrap as a valid tool of inference for quasi-maximum likelihood estimators (QMLE). We provide a unified framework for analyzing bootstrapped...