A Bayesian approach to default rate estimation is proposed and illustrated using a prior distribution assessed from an experienced industry expert. The principle advantage of the Bayesian approach is the potential for coherent incorporation of expert information - crucial when data are scarce or...

In this paper, we extend the parametric, asymmetric, stochastic volatility model (ASV), where returns are correlated with volatility, by flexibly modeling the bivariate distribution of the return and volatility innovations nonparametrically. Its novelty is in modeling the joint, conditional,...

Growth rate data that are collected incompletely in cross-sections is a quite frequent problem. Chow and Lin (1971) have developed a method for predicting unobserved disaggregated time series and we propose an extension of the procedure for completing cross-sectional growth rates similar to the...

This paper analyzes house price data belonging to three hierarchical levels of spatial units. House selling prices with associated individual attributes (the elementary level-1) are grouped within municipalities (level-2), which form districts (level-3), which are themselves nested in counties...

Categorical data occur in a wide range of statistical applications. If the data are observed in matched pairs, it is often of interest to examine the differences between the responses. We concentrate on tests of axial symmetry in two-way tables. A commonly used procedure is the Bowker test which...

This paper presents the R-package <B>MitISEM</B> (mixture of <I>t</I> by importance sampling weighted expectation maximization) which provides an automatic and flexible two-stage method to approximate a non-elliptical target density kernel -- typically a posterior density kernel -- using an adaptive mixture...</i></b>