This paper develops a method to improve the estimation of jump variation using high frequency data with the existence of market microstructure noises. Accurate estimation of jump variation is in high demand, as it is an important component of volatility in finance for portfolio allocation,...

The paper outlines a methodology for analyzing daily stock returns that relinquishes the assumption of global stationarity. Giving up this common working hypothesis reflects our belief that fundamental features of the financial markets are continuously and significantly changing. Our approach...

Decision-makers often consult different experts to build reliable forecasts on variables of interest. Combining more opinions and calibrating them to maximize the forecast accuracy is consequently a crucial issue in several economic problems. This paper applies a Bayesian beta mixture model to...

Estimation of GARCH models can be simplified by augmenting quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) estimation with variance targeting, which reduces the degree of parameterization and facilitates estimation. We compare the two approaches and investigate, via simulations, how non-normality features of the...

We provide empirical evidence of volatility forecasting in relation to asymmetries present in the dynamics of both return and volatility processes. Using recently-developed methodologies to detect jumps from high frequency price data, we estimate the size of positive and negative jumps and...

This paper investigates whether oil prices have a reliable and stable out-of-sample relationship with the Canadian/U.S dollar nominal exchange rate. Despite state-of-the-art methodologies, we find little systematic relation between oil prices and the exchange rate at the monthly and quarterly...

This paper proposes new methodologies for evaluating out-of-sample forecasting performance that are robust to the choice of the estimation window size. The methodologies involve evaluating the predictive ability of forecasting models over a wide range of window sizes. We show that the tests...

Inflation is a far from homogeneous phenomenon, a fact often neglected in modelling consumer price inflation. This study, the first of its kind for an emerging market country, investigates gains to inflation forecast accuracy by aggregating weighted forecasts of the sub-component price indices,...

This paper documents the existence of a slowly evolving trend in the dividend-price ratio, dpt, determined by a demographic variable, MY: the middle-aged to young ratio. Deviations of dpt from this long-run component explain transitory but persistent fluctuations in stock market returns. The...

Models for the twelve-month-ahead US rate of inflation, measured by the chain weighted consumer expenditure deflator, are estimated for 1974-99 and subsequent pseudo out-of-sample forecasting performance is examined. Alternative forecasting approaches for different information sets are compared...