Statistics Netherlands uses a state space model to estimate the Dutch unemployment by using monthly series about the labour force surveys (LFS). More accurate estimates of this variable can be obtained by including auxiliary information in the model, such as the univariate administrative series...

We introduce the new F-Riesz distribution to model tail-heterogeneity in fat-tailed covariance matrix observations. In contrast to the typical matrix-valued distributions from the econometric literature, the F-Riesz distribution allows for di↵erent tail behavior across all variables in the...

We explore a periodic analysis in the context of unobserved components time series models that decompose time series into components of interest such as trend and seasonal. Periodic time series models allow dynamic characteristics to depend on the period of the year, month, week or day. In the...

We model 1981-2002 annual US default frequencies for a panel of firms in different rating and age classes. The data is decomposed into a systematic and firm-specific risk component, where the systematic component reflects the general economic conditions and default climate. We have to cope with...