Detecting heterogeneity within a population is crucial in many economic and financial applications. Econometrically, this requires a credible determination of multimodality in a given data distribution. We propose a straightforward yet effective technique for mode inference in discrete data...

Accurate prediction of risk measures such as Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) requires precise estimation of the tail of the predictive distribution. Two novel concepts are introduced that offer a specific focus on this part of the predictive density: the censored posterior, a...

Divergent priors are improper when defined on unbounded supports. Bartlett's paradox has been taken to imply that using improper priors results in ill-defined Bayes factors, preventing model comparison by posterior probabilities. However many improper priors have attractive properties that...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in <I>Computational Statistics & Data Analysis</I> (2012). Vol. 56(11), 3398-3414.<p> Strategic choices for efficient and accurate evaluation of marginal likelihoods by means of Monte Carlo simulation methods are studied for the case of highly non-elliptical...</p></i>

Highly non-elliptical posterior distributions may occur in several econometric models, in particular, when the likelihood information is allowed to dominate and data information is weak. We explain the issue of highly non-elliptical posteriors in a model for the effect of education on income...

A Bayesian model averaging procedure is presented that makes use of a finite mixture of many model structures within the class of vector autoregressive (VAR) processes. It is applied to two empirical issues. First, stability of the Great Ratios in U.S. macro-economic time series is investigated,...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jae.2411/full">'Journal of Applied Econometrics'</A>, 2014, 29(7), 1164-1182.<P> Changing time series properties of US inflation and economic activity, measured as marginal costs, are modeled within a set of extended Phillips Curve (PC) models. It is shown that...</p></a>

This paper presents the R package MitISEM, which provides an automatic and flexible method to approximate a non-elliptical target density using adaptive mixtures of Student-t densities, where only a kernel of the target density is required. The approximation can be used as a candidate density in...

We summarize the general combination approach by Billio et al. [2010]. In the combination model the weights follow logistic autoregressive processes, change over time and their dynamics are possible driven by the past forecasting performances of the predictive densities. For illustrative...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in 'The International Economic Review', 2013, 54(1), 385-402.<P> The empirical support for features of a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model with two technology shocks is valuated using Bayesian model averaging over vector autoregressions....</p>