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...

We investigate the relationship between long-term U.S. stock market risks and the macroeconomic environment using a two component GARCH-MIDAS model. Our results provide strong evidence in favor of counter-cyclical behavior of long-term stock market volatility. Among the various macro variables...

The substantial variation in the real price of oil since 2003 has renewed interest in the question of how to forecast monthly and quarterly oil prices. There also has been increased interest in the link between financial markets and oil markets, including the question of whether financial market...

We propose a new approach to model high and low frequency components of equity correlations. Our framework combines a factor asset pricing structure with other specifications capturing dynamic properties of volatilities and covariances between a single common factor and idiosyncratic returns....

In recent years support vector regression (SVR), a novel neural network (NN) technique, has been successfully used for financial forecasting. This paper deals with the application of SVR in volatility forecasting. Based on a recurrent SVR, a GARCH method is proposed and is compared with a moving...

Regional employment volatility is an undesirable phenomenon which describes a strongly fluctuating pattern of employment, thus, "instability" of a local economy. In the literature on this field, much of the attention has been paid to two main issues. First, a group studies has investigated the...

There is an ongoing debate on whether certain sector structures enhance regional employment growth. Often, regional policies promote clusters and, hence, regional specialisation. It is commonly believed that clusters boost regional economic performance. However, in the present manuscript a...