This paper proposes a constrained principal components (CnPC) estimator for efficient estimation of large-dimensional factor models when errors are crosssectionally correlated and the number of cross-sections (N) may be larger than the number of observations (T). Although principal components...

Measuring bias is important as it helps identify flaws in quantitative forecasting methods or judgmental forecasts. It can, therefore, potentially help improve forecasts. Despite this, bias tends to be under represented in the literature: many studies focus solely on measuring accuracy. Methods...

Strong consistency of least squares estimators of the slope parameter in simple linear regression models is established for predetermined stochastic regressors. The main result covers a class of models which falls outside the applicability of what is presently available in the literature. An...

This paper analyses the contribution of survey data, in particular various sentiment indicators, to nowcasts of quarterly euro area GDP. It uses a genuine real-time dataset that is constructed from original press releases in order to transform the actual dataflow into an interpretable flow of...

This article introduces lassopack, a suite of programs for regularized regression in Stata. lassopack implements lasso, square-root lasso, elastic net, ridge regression, adaptive lasso and post-estimation OLS. The methods are suitable for the high-dimensional setting where the number of...

This article introduces lassopack, a suite of programs for regularized regression in Stata. lassopack implements lasso, square-root lasso, elastic net, ridge regression, adaptive lasso and post-estimation OLS. The methods are suitable for the high-dimensional setting where the number of...

We propose a new data-rich environment model of the yield curve, the macroeconomy, monetary policies and effective exchange rates for a panel of 11 countries: the iDREAM. The endogenous variables are observable (short- and long-term interest rates, exchange rates) and latent factors (economic...

In this work, we rely on unconventional data sources to nowcast the year-on-year growth rate of Finnish indus-trial production, for different industries. As predictors, we use real-time truck traffic volumes measured automatically in different geographical locations around Finland, as well as...

We survey the nascent literature on machine learning in the study of financial markets. We highlight the best examples of what this line of research has to offer and recommend promising directions for future research. This survey is designed for both financial economists interested in grasping...

In this paper we propose a hierarchical shrinkage approach for multi-country VAR models. In implementation, we consider three different scale mixtures of Normals priors — specifically, Horseshoe, Normal- Gamma, and Normal-Gamma-Gamma priors. We provide new theoretical results for the...