A prediction model is any statement of a probability distribution for an outcome not yet observed. This study considers the properties of weighted linear combinations of n prediction models, or linear pools, evaluated using the conventional log predictive scoring rule. The log score is a concave...

Bayesian inference in a time series model provides exact, out-of-sample predictive distributions that fully and coherently incorporate parameter uncertainty. This study compares and evaluates Bayesian predictive distributions from alternative models, using as an illustration five alternative...

We demonstrate that the parameters controlling skewness and kurtosis in popular equity return models estimated at daily frequency can be obtained almost as precisely as if volatility is observable by simply incorporating the strong information content of realized volatility measures extracted...

The evaluation of hedge fund performance is challenging given the flexible nature of hedge funds' strategies and their lack of operational transparency. As a result inference about skill is inevitably contaminated by the error in the benchmark model. To address this concern, we propose a model...

The intuitiveness and practicability of mean-variance portfolios largely depends on the accuracy of moment estimates, which are subject to large estimation errors and conditional on time. We propose a model accounting for factor dynamics in a Bayesian setting, in which the impact of estimation...

We study whether a large set of financial ratios provides valuable information about future excess stock returns. Confronted with a data-rich environment, we propose a novel ``divide and conquer" methodology that allows to efficiently retain all of the information available to investors. In...

In this paper, we investigate whether credit spread curve information helps forecast the government bond yield curve and whether the joint dynamics of the government bond yields and credit spreads have structural changes. For this purpose, we use a joint dynamic Nelson-Siegel (DNS) model of the...

The proliferation of anomalies and the resulting `factor zoo' has challenged finance researchers to identify firm characteristics that are genuinely related to the cross-sectional variation in expected stock returns. We address this challenge using a Bayesian ensemble of trees approach, namely,...

COVID-19 pandemic is an extreme event that created a turmoil in stock markets around the world. This unexpected circumstance poses a critical question whether the prevailing models can help predict the plummets of indices, hence the returns. In this study, we model the stock returns using...