Forecast combinations have been repeatedly shown to outperform individual professional forecasts and complicated time series models in accuracy. Their ease of use and accuracy makes them important tools for policy decisions. While simple combinations work remarkably well in some situations,...

Forecast combinations have been repeatedly shown to outperform individual professional forecasts and complicated time series models in accuracy. Their ease of use and accuracy makes them important tools for policy decisions. While simple combinations work remarkably well in some situations,...

We propose new forecast combination schemes for predicting turning points of business cycles. The combination schemes deal with the forecasting performance of a given set of models and possibly providing better turning point predictions. We consider turning point predictions generated by...

Recent models for credit risk management make use of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The HMMs are used to forecast quantiles of corporate default rates. Little research has been done on the quality of such forecasts if the underlying HMM is potentially mis-specified. In this paper, we focus on...

The central banks introduce and implement the monetary and financial stabilities policies, going from the accurate estimations of national macro-financial indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Analyzing the dependence of the GDP on the time, the central banks accurately estimate...

This paper compares the forecasting performance of different models which have been proposed for forecasting in the presence of structural breaks. These models differ in their treatment of the break process, the parameters defining the model which applies in each regime and the out-of-sample...

This paper compares the forecasting performance of different models which have been proposed for forecasting in the presence of structural breaks. These models differ in their treatment of the break process, the model which applies in each regime and the out-of-sample probability of a break...

Previous early-warning systems (EWSs) for currency crises have relied on models that require a priori dating of crises. This paper proposes an alternative EWS, based on a Markov-switching model, which identifies and characterizes crisis periods endogenously; this also allows the model to utilize...

This paper intends to examine the volatility spillover effect between selective developed markets including U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan and Hong Kong over the sample period from 1996 to 2011. We introduce a Markov switching causality method to model the potential instability of volatility...

This paper compares the forecasting performance of different models which have been proposed for forecasting in the presence of structural breaks. These models differ in their treatment of the break process, the parameters defining the model which applies in each regime and the out-of-sample...