While the yield spread has long been recognized as a good predictor of recessions, it seems to have been largely overlooked by professional forecasters. We examine this puzzle, established by Rudebusch and Williams (2009), in a data-rich environment including not just the yield spread but many...

We propose a generalized ordered response model that nests the popular Carlson-Parkin (CP) method to quantify household in flation expectations while explicitly control for cross-sectional heterogeneity in the threshold parameters and the variance. By matching qualitative and quantitative data...

The main focus of this paper is to explore the potential for improving econometric specification in modeling hedge fund returns. Specifically, we examine the effects of (1) correcting for selectivity bias due to sample attrition; (2) allowing for nonlinearity; and (3) controlling for...

We study the role of consumer confidence surveys in forecasting personal consumption expenditure. We reexamine existing models of consumption and consumer confidence using both quarterly and monthly data in real time. Additionally, we produce forecasts of consumption expenditures with and...

While the yield spread has long been recognized as a good predictor of recessions, it seems to have been largely overlooked by professional forecasters. We examine this puzzle, established by Rudebusch and Williams (2009), in a data-rich environment including not just the yield spread but many...

We study the information content of the five components of the University of Michigan¡¯s Index of Consumer Sentiment and identify the main determinants of these measures, using semiparametric ordered choice models and household data from the Surveys of Consumers from January 1978 to September...

While the yield spread has long been recognized as a good predictor of recessions, it seems to have been largely overlooked by professional forecasters. We examine this puzzle, established by Rudebusch and Williams (2009), in a data-rich environment including not just the yield spread but many...

We combine the probability forecasts of real GDP declines from the U.S. Survey of Professional Forecasters, after trimming the forecasts that do not have "value" in the sense of Merton (1981). For this purpose, we propose a new test to evaluate probability forecasts that does not require...

This paper focuses on the newly proposed on-line forecast combination algorithms in Sancetta (2010), Yang (2004), and Wei and Yang (2012). We first establish the asymptotic relationship between these new algorithms and the Bates and Granger (1969) method. Then, we show that when implemented on...

This paper provides a critical review of the popular Carlson–Parkin (CP) quantification method using household-level data from the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers. We find strong evidence against the threshold constancy, symmetry, homogeneity, and overall unbiasedness...