This paper reviews important concepts and methods that are useful for hypothesis testing.First, we discuss the Neyman-Pearson framework. Various approaches to optimalityare presented, including finite-sample and large-sample optimality. Then, some of the mostimportant methods are summarized, as...

Fund-of-funds (FoF) managers face the task of selecting a (relatively) small number ofhedge funds from a large universe of candidate funds. We analyse whether such a selectioncan be successfully achieved by looking at the track records of the available funds alone,using advanced statistical...

Macroeconomic time series often involve a threshold effect in theirARMA representation, and exhibit long memory features. In this paperwe introduce a new class of threshold ARFIMA models to account forthis. The threshold effect is introduced in the autoregressive and/or thefractional integration...

We test for state-dependent bias in the European Central Bank's inflation projections. We show that the ECB tends to underpredict when the observed inflation rate at the time of forecasting is higher than an estimated threshold of 1.8%. The bias is most pronounced at intermediate forecasting...

We revisit the apparent historical success of technical trading rules on daily prices of the Dow Jones index. First, we use the False Discovery Rate as a new approach to data snooping. The advantage of the FDR over existing methods is that it is more powerful and not restricted only to the best...

We propose a new multivariate GARCH model with Dynamic Conditional Correlations that extends previous models by admitting multivariate thresholds in conditional volatilitiesand correlations. The model estimation is feasible in large dimensions and the positive definiteness of the conditional...

We propose a simple class of semiparametric multivariate GARCH models, allowing for asymmetric volatilities and time-varying conditional correlations. Estimates for time-varying conditional correlations are constructed by means of a convex combination of estimates for averaged correlations...

The validation of probability calibration is an inherently difficult task. We develop a testing procedure for credit-scoring models. The models comprise two components to check whether the ex-ante probabilities support the ex-post frequencies. The first component tests the level of the...

The term structure of American interest rates is filtered to reduce the influence of cross correlations and auto correlations on its factors. A three-factor model is fitted to the filtered data. Contrary to most studies of the term structure on monthly data, performing statistical tests we...

This paper uses a new approach to determine the fraction of truly skilled managers among the universe of U.S. domestic-equity mutual funds over the 1975 to 2006 period. We develop a simple technique that properly accounts for “false discoveries,” or mutual funds which exhibit significant...