We examine the evidence on excess stock return predictability in a Bayesian setting in which the investor faces uncertainty about both the existence and strength of predictability. When we apply our methods to the dividend-price ratio, we find that even investors who are quite skeptical about...

The ranking of multivariate volatility models is inherently problematic because when the unobservable volatility is substituted by a proxy, the ordering implied by a loss function may be biased with respect to the intended one. We point out that the size of the distortion is strictly tied to the...

We propose a fast resample method for two step nonlinear parametric and semiparametric models, which does not require recomputation of the second stage estimator during each resample iteration. The fast resample method directly exploits the score function representations computed on each...

A quasi-maximum likelihood procedure for estimating the parameters of multi-dimensional diffusions is developed in which the transitional density is a multivariate Gaussian density with first and second moments approximating the true moments of the unknown density. For affine drift and diffusion...

We provide a new asymptotic analysis of model selection procedure that compares likelihoods of two candidate diffusion models. Our asymptotic analysis relies on two dimensional asymptotic expansions with shrinking sampling interval Δ and increasing sampling span T, and clarifies the different...

We propose new methods for evaluating predictive densities. The methods include Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Cramér–von Mises-type tests for the correct specification of predictive densities robust to dynamic mis-specification. The novelty is that the tests can detect mis-specification in the...

We consider model selection facing uncertainty over the choice of variables and the occurrence and timing of multiple location shifts. General-to-simple selection is extended by adding an impulse indicator for every observation to the set of candidate regressors: see Johansen and Nielsen (2009)....

In this paper, we empirically assess the predictive accuracy of a large group of models that are specified using principle components and other shrinkage techniques, including Bayesian model averaging and various bagging, boosting, least angle regression and related methods. Our results suggest...

We decompose the squared VIX index, derived from US S&P500 options prices, into the conditional variance of stock returns and the equity variance premium. We evaluate a plethora of state-of-the-art volatility forecasting models to produce an accurate measure of the conditional variance. We then...

This paper derives the asymptotic distribution for a number of rank-based and classical residual specification tests in AR–GARCH type models. We consider tests for the null hypotheses of no linear and quadratic serial residual autocorrelation, residual symmetry, and no structural breaks. We...