Based on a panel of annual data for 17 growth and inflation forecasts from 14 institutions for Germany, we analyse forecast accuracy for the periods before and after the Great Recession, including measures of directional change accuracy based on Receiver Operating Curves (ROC).We find only small...

Studies of bond return predictability find a puzzling disparity between strong statistical evidence of return predictability and the failure to convert return forecasts into economic gains. We show that resolving this puzzle requires accounting for important features of bond return models such...

We develop a novel method to impose constraints on univariate predictive regressions of stock returns. Unlike the previous approaches in the literature, we implement our constraints directly on the predictor, setting it to zero whenever its value falls below the variable's past 12-month high....

We propose a new method to improve density forecasts of the equity premium using information from options markets. We obtain predictive densities from stochastic volatility (SV) and GARCH models, which we then tilt using the second moment of the risk-neutral distribution implied by options...

We propose a new approach to imposing economic constraints on forecasts of the equity premium. Economic constraints are used to modify the posterior distribution of the parameters of the predictive return regression in a way that better allows the model to learn from the data. We consider two...