A notion of forecast quality is defined that is appropriate when returns forecasts are used in a simple investment decision. The relation between the conditional distribution of returns and optimal point forecasts for a risk neutral investor is characterised and it is shown that the conditional...

Effective monitoring of a minimum wage, requires that establishments potentially paying low wages are effectively identified. This paper investigates the identification of establishments paying low wages prior to the introduction of the British National Minimum Wage in 1999, through the...

In this paper we propose and estimate a dynamic structural model of fixed capital investment using firm-level Spanish data. We first characterize the optimal behavior of a firm facing uncertainty in demand and input prices, as well as kinked and lump-sum adjustment costs. This nonconvex...

We present a multivariate generalization of the simple markov-switching model. We allow for the introduction of several latent processes that have a simple parametric distribution. The matrix-variate bernoulli distribution yields a flexible yet parsimonious pattern of dependence between the...

This paper proposes a new empirical representation of US inflation expectations in a Stace-Space Markov-Switching framework in order to identify the expectations regimes which are associated with short and long term Phillips curves. We explicitly identify the dynamic of inflation expectation...

Unrestricted reduced form vector autoregressive (VAR) models have become a dominant research strategy in empirical macroeconomics since Sims (1980) critique of traditional macroeconometric modeling. They are however subjected to the curse of dimensionality. In this paper we propose...

In this paper we use a Dynamic Factor model to retrieve vulnerability indicators able to predict financial turmoil. A stochastic simulation experiment is then used to produce the corresponding probability forecasts regarding the currency crisis events a®ecting a number of East Asian countries...