In this paper we explore the use of Genetic Algorithms (GA) to calibrate seasonal BVAR models. In this way, the mechanistic use of seasonal adjustment procedures is avoided, since seasonality becomes a structural, basic and explicit part of the BVAR model. At the same time, the use of GA allows...

We introduce a class of large Bayesian vector autoregressions (BVARs) that allows for non-Gaussian, heteroscedastic and serially dependent innovations. To make estimation computationally tractable, we exploit a certain Kronecker structure of the likelihood implied by this class of models. We...

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an extreme variation in many key macroeconomic indicators. This paper documents that multivariate t-distributed errors are better equipped to capture this variation than common stochastic volatility in a Bayesian VAR. Diagnostics indicate that the data prefers to...

We propose a new semi-parametric model for the implied volatility surface, which incorporates machine learning algorithms. Given a starting model, a tree-boosting algorithm sequentially minimizes the residuals of observed and estimated implied volatility. To overcome the poor predicting power of...

In time series analysis, latent factors are often introduced to model the heterogeneous time evolution of the observed processes. The presence of unobserved components makes the maximum likelihood estimation method more difficult to apply. A Bayesian approach can sometimes be preferable since it...

In time series analysis, latent factors are often introduced to model the heterogeneous time evolution of the observed processes. The presence of unobserved components makes the maximum likelihood estimation method more difficult to apply. A Bayesian approach can sometimes be preferable since it...