This paper studies macroeconomic forecasting and variable selection using a folded-concave penalized regression with a very large number of predictors. The penalized regression approach leads to sparse estimates of the regression coefficients, and is applicable even if the dimensionality of the...

We present new methodology and a case study in use of a class of Bayesian predictive synthesis (BPS) models for multivariate time series forecasting. This extends the foundational BPS framework to the multivariate setting, with detailed application in the topical and challenging context of...

In this paper we examine how the forecasting performance of Bayesian VARs is affected by a number of specification choices. In the baseline case, we use a Normal-Inverted Wishart prior that, when combined with a (pseudo-) iterated approach, makes the analytical computation of multi-step...

This paper uses three well known forecasting models, particularly unrestricted VAR, Bayesian VAR and Factor Augmented VAR. These models we use for forecasting the key macroeconomic variables in Armenia (real growth of GDP, inflation and nominal short-term interest rate). We apply three models to...

This paper evaluates the forecast performance of Bayesian vector autoregressions (BVARs) on Russian data. We estimate BVARs of different sizes and compare the accuracy of their out-of-sample forecasts with those obtained with unrestricted vector autoregressions and random walk with drift. We...

We introduce a Combined Density Nowcasting (CDN) approach to Dynamic Factor Models (DFM) that in a coherent way accounts for time-varying uncertainty of several model and data features in order to provide more accurate and complete density nowcasts. The combination weights are latent random...

In this paper we investigate the forecasting performance of the median Consumer Price Index (CPI) in a variety of Bayesian vector autoregressions (BVARs) that are often used for monetary policy. Until now, the use of trimmed-mean price statistics in forecasting inflation has often been relegated...

This paper investigates the usefulness of the factor model, which extracts latent information from a large set of data, in forecasting Korean macroeconomic variables. In addition to the well-known principal component analysis (PCA), we apply sparse principal component analysis (SPCA) to build a...

In this paper we propose to use the common trends of the Mexican economy in order to predict economic activity one and two steps ahead. We exploit the cointegration properties of the macroeconomic time series, such that, when the series are I(1) and cointegrated, there is a factor...

A large set of financial variables has only limited power to predict a latent factor common to the year-ahead forecast errors for real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, the unemployment rate, and Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation for three sets of professional forecasters: the Federal...