We develop a formal statistical approach to investigate the possibility that leading indicator variables have different lead times at business cycle peaks and troughs. For this purpose, we propose a novel Markov switching vector autoregressive model, where economic growth and leading indicators...

This article proposes a modified method for the construction of diffusion indexes in macroeconomic forecasting using principal component regres- sion. The method aims to maximize the amount of variance of the origi- nal predictor variables retained by the diffusion indexes, by matching the data...

In this paper we develop a new semi-parametric model for conditional correlations, which combines parametric univariate GARCH-type specifications for the individual conditional volatilities with nonparametric kernel regression for the conditional correlations. This approach not only avoids the...

The purpose of the paper is to discuss ten things potential users should know about the limits of the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) representation for estimating and forecasting time-varying conditional correlations. The reasons given for caution about the use of DCC include the...

A Bayesian model averaging procedure is presented within the class of vector autoregressive (VAR) processes and applied to two empirical issues. First, stability of the "Great Ratios" in U.S. macro-economic time series is investigated, together with the presence and e¤ects of permanent shocks....

We analyze five vintages of eighteen quarterly macroeconomic variables for the Netherlands and we focus on the degree of deterministic seasonality in these series. We document that the data show most such deterministic seasonality for their first release vintage and for the last available...

In the last 15 years, several Multivariate GARCH (MGARCH) models have appeared in the literature. The two most widely known and used are the Scalar BEKK model of Engle and Kroner (1995) and Ding and Engle (2001), and the DCC model of Engle (2002). Some recent research has begun to examine MGARCH...

A sensible Bayesian model selection or comparison strategy implies selecting the model with the highest posterior probability. While some improper priors have attractive properties such as, e.g., low frequentist risk, it is generally claimed that Bartlett's paradox implies that using improper...

In this paper we address the question whether countries on the African continent have lower average growth rates in real GDP per capita than countries in Asia and Latin America. In contrast to previous studies, we do not aggregate the data, nor do we a priori assign countries to clusters....

We propose a new method of leading index construction that combines the need for data compression with the objective of forecasting. This so-called principal covariate index is constructed to forecast growth rates of the Composite Coincident Index. The forecast performance is compared with an...