Forecast combination has been proven to be a very important technique to obtain accurate predictions for various applications in economics, finance, marketing and many other areas. In many applications, forecast errors exhibit heavy-tailed behaviors for various reasons. Unfortunately, to our...

Decision-makers often consult different experts to build reliable forecasts on variables of interest. Combining more opinions and calibrating them to maximize the forecast accuracy is consequently a crucial issue in several economic problems. This paper applies a Bayesian beta mixture model to...

It has been established in the literature that volatility of stock returns exhibits complex properties of not only volatility clustering, but also long memory, regime change, and substantial outliers during turbulent and calm periods. Hence, this paper seeks to analyze volatility spillover,...

Although survey-based point predictions have been found to outperform successful forecasting models, corresponding variance forecasts are frequently diagnosed as heavily distorted. Professional forecasters who report inconspicuously low ex ante variances often produce squared forecast errors...

The paper investigates the predictive power of a new survey implemented by the Federal Employment Agency (FEA) for forecasting German unemployment in the short run. Every month, the CEOs of the FEA's regional agencies are asked about their expectations of future labor market developments. We...

In this paper we examine the issue of asymmetry in the return and volatility spillover effects from the US equity market into the Canadian and Mexican equity markets. We model the conditional volatility of the returns in each of the three markets using the asymmetric power model of Ding, Granger...

This paper evaluates inflation forecasts made by Norges Bank which is a successful forecast targeting central bank. It is expected that Norges Bank produces inflation forecasts that are on average better than other forecasts, both naive forecasts, and forecasts from econometric models outside...

Den gängigen Konjunkturprognosen liegen in der Regel komplexe ökonometrische Modelle mit einer Vielzahl von Input-Variablen zugrunde. Das Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach fragt in seiner 'Neujahrsfrage' die Bevölkerung seit Gründung der Bundesrepublik jedes Jahr nach ihren Erwartungen...

Die Nettozuwanderung nach Deutschland nimmt seit 2010 deutlich zu. Der maßgebliche Faktor hierfür dürfte die konjunkturelle Sondersituation in Europa sein, die sich durch einen Arbeitsmarktboom in Deutschland und eine stark gestiegene Arbeitslosigkeit in anderen Teilen Europas auszeichnet....

This paper focuses on the development of both failure prediction models on a paired sample and a random sample of small and medium-sized firms with head offices located in the region of Castilla y León (Spain), in order to prove if the predictive power of the developed models is affected by the...