Out-of-sample tests of forecast performance depend on how a given data set is split into estimation and evaluation periods, yet no guidance exists on how to choose the split point. Empirical forecast evaluation results can therefore be difficult to interpret, particularly when several values of...

We establish the equivalence between a commonly used out-of-sample test of equal predictive accuracy and the difference between two Wald statistics. This equivalence greatly simpli?es the computational burden of calculating recursive out-of-sample tests and evaluating their critical values. Our...

Empirical studies using survey data on expectations have frequently observed that forecasts are biased and have concluded that agents are not rational. We establish that existing rationality tests are not robust to even small deviations from symmetric loss and hence have little ability to tell...

We apply a new bootstrap statistical technique to examine the performance of the U.S. openend, domestic-equity mutual fund industry over the 1975 to 2002 period. Specifically, we bootstrap the joint distribution of performance measures (\alphas) across all funds to determine whether managers of...

This paper implements strategies that use macroeconomic variables to select European equity mutual funds, including Pan-European, country, and sector funds. We find that several macro-variables are useful in locating funds with future outperformance, and that countryspecific mutual funds provide...

We analyze the complete subset regression (CSR) approach of Elliott et al. (2013) in situations with many possible predictor variables. The CSR approach has the computational advantage that it can be applied even when the number of predictors exceeds the sample size. Theoretical results...

This paper derives a distribution free procedure for testing the accuracy of forecasts when the focus of the analysis is on the correct prediction of the direction of change in the variable under consideration. The test applies to a general m x n contingency table and it is shown that the...

The paper analyses the impact of persistence and volatility in the discount rate in present-value models on conintegration tests in levels and in logarithms. In simulations we find that the probability of not rejecting the null of no cointegration depends on the persistence of the discount rate...