We show empirically that survey-based measures of expected inflation are significant and strong predictors of future aggregate stock returns in several industrialized countries both in-sample and out-of-sample. By empirically discriminating between competing sources of this return predictability...

This paper provides empirical evidence that combinations of option implied and time series volatility forecasts that are conditional on current information are statistically superior to individual models, unconditional combinations, and hybrid forecasts. Superior forecasting performance is...

Much of the trading activity in Equity markets is directed to brokerage houses. In exchange they provide so-called quot;soft dollarsquot; which basically are amounts spent in quot;researchquot; for identifying profitable trading opportunities. Soft dollars represent about USD 1 out of every USD...

In this study, a vector autoregression (VAR) model with time-varying parameters (TVP) to predict the daily Indian rupee (INR)/US dollar (USD) exchange rates for the Indian economy is developed. The method is based on characterization of the TVP as an optimal control problem. The methodology is a...

This paper studies the dynamics of stock market volatility and retail investor attention measured by internet search queries. We find a strong co-movement of stock market indices’ realized volatility and the search queries for their names. Furthermore, Granger causality is bi-directional: high...

This paper studies the dynamics of stock market volatility and retail investor attention measured by internet search queries. We find a strong co-movement of stock market indices' realized volatility and the search queries for their names. Furthermore, Granger causality is bi-directional: high...

Density forecasts have become quite important in economics and finance. For example, such forecasts play a central role in modern financial risk management techniques like Value at Risk. This paper suggests a regression based density forecast evaluation framework as a simple alternative to other...

The use of GARCH models with stable Paretian innovations in financial modeling has been recently suggested in the literature. This class of processes is attractive because it allows for conditional skewness and leptokurtosis of financial returns without ruling out normality. This contribution...

This paper discusses the role of the credit rating agencies during the recent financial crises. In particular, it examines whether the agencies can add to the dynamics of emerging market crises. Academics and investors often argue that sovereign credit ratings are responsible for pronounced...

We analyze whether newspaper content can predict aggregate future stock returns. Our study is based on articles published in the Handelsblatt, a leading German financial newspaper, from July 1989 to March 2011. We summarize newspaper content in a systematic way by constructing word-count indices...