We explore convenient analytic properties of distributions constructed as mixtures of scaled and shifted t-distributions. A feature that makes this family particularly desirable for econometric applications is that it possesses closed-form expressions for its anti-derivatives (e.g., the...

This study aims to forecast oil prices using evolutionary techniques such as gene expression programming (GEP) and artificial neural network (NN) models to predict oil prices over the period from January 2, 1986 to June 12, 2012. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models are...

Forecasting plays an essential role in energy economics. With new challenges and use cases in the energy system, forecasts have to meet more complex requirements, such as increasing temporal and spatial resolution of data. The concept of machine learning can meet these requirements by providing...

This paper proposes a novel theory, coined as Topological Tail Dependence Theory, that links the mathematical theory behind Persistent Homology (PH) and the financial stock market theory. This study also proposes a novel algorithm to measure topological stock market changes as well as the...

Predicting stock returns has been a never ending endeavour of both, practitioners and academics. Accurate forecasts are crucial for investment decisions and performances as well as for analysing market microstructures. This paper offers an innovative approach towards forecasting based on Neural...

Electricity price forecasting has become an area of increasing relevance in recent years. Despite the growing interest in predictive algorithms, the challenges are difficult to overcome given the restricted access to relevant data series and the lack of accurate metrics. Multiple models have...

If oil exporters stabilize the purchasing power of their export revenues in terms of imports, exchange rate developments (and particularly, developments in the US dollar/euro exchange rate) may contain information about oil price changes. This hypothesis depends on three conditions: (a) OPEC has...

Macroeconomic risk assessments play an important role in the forecasts of many institutions. However, to the best of our knowledge their performance has not been investigated yet. In this work, we study the Bank of England?s risk forecasts for inflation. We find that these forecasts do not...

We estimate the political economy determinants of budget deficit forecast errors. Since the adoption of the Stability Pact, Eurozone governments have manipulated forecasts before elections. The political orientation and the institutional design of governments also affects the quality of forecasts.