Most of the bankruptcy prediction models developed so far have in common that they are based on quantitative data or more precisely financial ratios. However, useful information can be lost when disregarding soft information. In this work, we develop an automated content analysis technique to...

Many postulated relations in finance imply that expected asset returns strictly increase in an underlying characteristic. To examine the validity of such a claim, one needs to take the entire range of the characteristic into account, as is done in the recent proposal of Patton and Timmermann...

The forecasting uncertainty around point macroeconomic forecasts is usually measured by the historical performance of the forecasting model, using measures such as root mean squared forecasting errors (RMSE). This measure, however, has the major drawback that it is constant over time and hence...

The authors use the Financial Stress Index created by the International Monetary Fund to predict the likelihood of financial stress events for five developed countries: Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. They use a semiparametric panel data model with...

The objective of this research is to introduce in literature new measures of accuracy for point forecasts (radical of order n of the mean of squared errors, mean for the difference between each predicted value and the mean of the effective values, ratio of radicals of sum of squared errors...

Based on the theory of static replication of variance swaps we assess the sign and magnitude of variance risk premiums in foreign exchange markets. We find significantly negative risk premiums when realized variance is computed from intraday data with low frequency. As a likely consequence of...

Tests for relative predictive accuracy have become a widespread addendum to forecast comparisons. Many empirical research reports conclude that the difference between the entertained forecasting models is 'insignificant'. This paper collects arguments that cast doubt on the usefulness of...

The interest rate assumptions for macroeconomic forecasts differ considerably among central banks. Common approaches are given by the assumption of constant interest rates, interest rates expected by market participants, or the central bank’s own interest rate expectations. From a theoretical...

Testing procedures for predictive regressions with lagged autoregressive variables imply a suboptimal inference in presence of small violations of ideal assumptions. We propose a novel testing framework resistant to such violations, which is consistent with nearly integrated regressors and...