Vector-autoregressive models are used to decompose housing returns in 18 OECD countries into cash ?ow (rent) news and discount rate (return) news. Only for two countries - Germany and Ireland - do changing expectations of future rents play a dominating role in explaining housing return...

We investigate the predictive power of the rent-to-price ratio for future real estate returns and rent growth in 18 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 2011. First, we document that in most countries returns are signi?cantly predictable by the rent-price ratio. An increase (decrease) in the...

We extend the VAR based intertemporal asset allocation approach from Campbell et al. (2003) to the case where the VAR parameter estimates are adjusted for small-sample bias. We apply the analytical bias formula from Pope (1990) using both Campbell et al.'s dataset, and an extended dataset with...

Based on Chen and Zhao's (2009) criticism of VAR based return decompositions, we explain in detail the various limitations and pitfalls involved in such decompositions. First, we show that Chen and Zhao's interpretation of their excess bond return decomposition is wrong: the residual component...

We analyze and compare the properties of various methods for bias-correcting parameter estimates in vector autoregressions. First, we show that two analytical bias formulas from the existing literature are in fact identical. Next, based on a detailed simulation study, we show that this simple...

This paper presents a new modelling framework for day–ahead electricity prices based on multivariate Lévy semistationary (MLSS) processes. Day–ahead prices specify the prices for electricity delivered over certain time windows on the next day and are determined in a daily auction. Since...

We examine the Stein-rule shrinkage estimator for possible improvements in estimation and forecasting when there are many predictors in a linear time series model. We consider the Stein-rule estimator of Hill and Judge (1987) that shrinks the unrestricted unbiased OLS estimator towards a...

The literature on excess return prediction has considered a wide array of estimation schemes, among them unrestricted and restricted regression coefficients. We consider bootstrap aggregation (bagging) to smooth parameter restrictions. Two types of restrictions are considered: positivity of the...

Following Diebold and Li (2006), we use the Nelson-Siegel (NS, 1987) yield curve factors. However the NS yield curve factors are not supervised for a specifi?c forecast target in the sense that the same factors are used for forecasting different variables, e.g., output growth or infl?ation. We...

A new and alternative quantile regression estimator is developed and it is shown that the estimator is root n-consistent and asymptotically normal. The estimator is based on a minimax ‘deviance function’ and has asymptotically equivalent properties to the usual quantile regression estimator....