We provide a simple and intuitive measure of interdependence of asset returns and/or volatilities. In particular, we formulate and examine precise and separate measures of return spillovers and volatility spillovers. Our framework facilitates study of both non-crisis and crisis episodes,...

We present a new empirical decomposition of the effects of financial liberalization on economic growth and on the incidence of crises. Our empirical estimates show that the direct effect of financial liberalization on growth by far outweighs the indirect effect via a higher propensity to crisis....

In this paper, we document the fact that countries that have experienced occasional financial crises have, on average, grown faster than countries with stable financial conditions. We measure the incidence of crisis with the skewness of credit growth, and find that it has a robust negative...

Despite the clear success of forecast combination in many economic environments, several important issues remain incompletely resolved. The issues relate to selection of the set of forecasts to combine, and whether some form of additional regularization (e.g., shrinkage) is desirable. Against...

We construct a framework for measuring economic activity at high frequency, potentially in real time. We use a variety of stock and flow data observed at mixed frequencies (including very high frequencies), and we use a dynamic factor model that permits exact filtering. We illustrate the...

We consider the forecasting of cointegrated variables, and we show that at long horizonsquot; nothing is lost by ignoring cointegration when forecasts are evaluated using standard multivariatequot; forecast accuracy measures. In fact, simple univariate Box-Jenkins forecasts are just as accurate....

It is obvious that forecasts are of great importance and widely used in economics and finance. Quite simply, good forecasts lead to good decisions. The importance of forecast evaluation and combination techniques follows immediately -- forecast users naturally have a keen interest in monitoring...