We propose a novel empirical framework to assess the likelihood of joint and conditional failure for Euro area sovereigns. Our model is based on a dynamic skewed-t copula which captures all the salient features of the data, including skewed and heavy-tailed changes in the price of CDS protection...

We consider the problem of smoothing data on two-dimensional grids with holes or gaps. Such grids are often referred to as difficult regions. Since the data is not observed on these locations, the gap is not part of the domain. We cannot apply standard smoothing methods since they smooth over...

We propose a multivariate combination approach to prediction based on a distributional state space representation of the weights belonging to a set of Bayesian predictive densities which have been obtained from alternative models. Several specifications of multivariate time-varying weights are...

A class of adaptive sampling methods is introduced for efficient posterior and predictive simulation. The proposed methods are robust in the sense that they can handle target distributions that exhibit non-elliptical shapes such as multimodality and skewness. The basic method makes use of...

A sequence of real numbers (xn) is Benford if the significands, i.e. the fraction parts in the floating-point representation of (xn), are distributed logarithmically. Similarly, a discrete-time irreducible and aperiodic finite-state Markov chain with probability transition matrix P and limiting...

We propose a quantification of the p-p plot that assigns equal weight to all distances between the respective distributions: the surface between the p-p plot and the diagonal. This surface is labelled the Harmonic Weighted Mass (HWM) index. We introduce the diagonal-deviation (d-d) plot that...

P-p plots contain all the information that is needed for scale-invariant comparisons. Indeed, Empirical Distribution Function (EDF) tests translate sample p-p plots into a single number. In this paper we characterize the set of all distinct p-p plots for two balanced sample of size n absent...

In simple static linear simultaneous equation models the empirical distributions of IV and OLS are examined under alternative sampling schemes and compared with their first-order asymptotic approximations. We demonstrate that the limiting distribution of consistent IV is not affected by...

In certain cases the distribution of the normalized maximumof a sample can be better approximated by a sequence ofdifferent extreme value distributions than by the final one. Weshow that these cases are rather restricted and that the possibleimprovement is not spectacular.

Economic problems such as large claims analysis in insurance and value-at-risk in finance, requireassessment of the probability P of extreme realizations Q. This paper provided a semi-parametricmethod for estimation of extreme (P, Q) combinations for data with heavy tails. We solve the...