We exploit direct model-free measures of daily equity return volatility and correlation obtained from high-frequency intraday transaction prices on individual stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average over a five-year period to confirm, solidify and extend existing characterizations of stock...

Using research designs patterned after randomized experiments, many recent economic studies examine outcome measures for treatment groups and comparison groups that are not randomly assigned. By using variation in explanatory variables generated by changes in state laws, government draft...

Despite powerful advances in yield curve modeling in the last twenty years, comparatively little attention has been paid to the key practical problem of forecasting the yield curve. In this paper we do so. We use neither the no-arbitrage approach, which focuses on accurately fitting the cross...

We derive the class of arbitrage-free affine dynamic term structure models that approximate the widely-used Nelson-Siegel yield-curve specification. Our theoretical analysis relates this new class of models to the canonical representation of the three-factor arbitrage-free affine model. Our...

We consider three sets of phenomena that feature prominently and separately in the financial economics literature: conditional mean dependence (or lack thereof) in asset returns, dependence (and hence forecastability) in asset return signs, and dependence (and hence forecastability) in asset...

We explore the macro/finance interface in the context of equity markets. In particular, using half a century of Livingston expected business conditions data we characterize directly the impact of expected business conditions on expected excess stock returns. Expected business conditions...

The possibility of exact maximum likelihood estimation of many observation-driven models remains an open question. Often only approximate maximum likelihood estimation is attempted, because the unconditional density needed for exact estimation is not known in closed form. Using simulation and...

We propose methods for evaluating density forecasts. We focus primarily on methodsquot; that are applicable regardless of the particular user's loss function. We illustrate the methodsquot; with a detailed simulation example, and then we present an application to density forecasting ofquot;...

Since 1968, the Survey of Professional Forecasters has asked respondents to provide aquot; complete probability distribution of expected future inflation. We evaluate the adequacy ofquot; those density forecasts using the framework of Diebold, Gunther and Tay (1997). The analysisquot; reveals...