Recent models for credit risk management make use of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The HMMs are used to forecast quantiles of corporate default rates. Little research has been done on the quality of such forecasts if the underlying HMM is potentially mis-specified. In this paper, we focus on...

We present new results for the likelihood-based analysis of the dynamic factor model that possibly includes intercepts and explanatory variables. The latent factors are modelled by stochastic processes. The idiosyncratic disturbances are specified as autoregressive processes with mutually...

Forecasts from various experts are often used in macroeconomic forecasting models. Usually the focus is on the mean or median of the survey data. In the present study we adopt a different perspective on the survey data as we examine the predictive power of disagreement amongst forecasters. The...

We propose a new approach to deal with structural breaks in time series models. The key contribution is an alternative dynamic stochastic specification for the model parameters which describes potential breaks. After a break new parameter values are generated from a so-called baseline prior...

We propose a Bayesian infinite hidden Markov model to estimate time- varying parameters in a vector autoregressive model. The Markov structure allows for heterogeneity over time while accounting for state-persistence. By modelling the transition distribution as a Dirichlet process mixture model,...

A novel approach to inference for a specific region of the predictive distribution is introduced. An important domain of application is accurate prediction of financial risk measures, where the area of interest is the left tail of the predictive density of logreturns. Our proposed approach...