Common approaches to test for the economic value of directional forecasts are based on the classical Chi-square test for independence, Fisher’s exact test or the Pesaran and Timmerman (1992) test for market timing. These tests are asymptotically valid for serially independent observations....

It is commonly accepted that information is helpful if it can be exploited to improve a decision making process. In economics, decisions are often based on forecasts of up- or downward movements of the variable of interest. We point out that directional forecasts can provide a useful framework...

Structural innovations are typically hidden and often identified by means of a-priori economic reasoning. Under multivariate Gaussian model innovations there is no loss measure available to distinguish between particular identifying restrictions and rotations thereof. Based on a non Gaussian...

In this paper we adopt a principal components analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the term structure and employ autoregressive models (AR) to forecast principal components which, in turn, are used to forecast swap rates. Arguing in favor of structural variation, we propose data...

In empirical macroeconomics, proxy structural vector autoregressive models (SVARs) have become a prominent path towards detecting monetary policy (MP) shocks. However, in practice, the merits of proxy SVARs depend on the relevance and exogeneity of the instrumental information employed. Our...

We conceptualize global liquidity as global monetary policy and credit components by means of a large-scale dynamic factor model in the spirit of Eickmeier,Gambacorta, and Hofmann (2014). Going beyond previous work, we decompose aggregate credit components into credit supply and demand flows...

This study provides an assessment of the R&D–patent relation of European pharmaceutical firms that are not flawed by endogeneity biases. Firms invest in R&D and generate latent knowledge which then manifests in observable patent outcomes through a Poisson model. The process of turning R&D into...

We examine the causal relationship between US monetary policy shocks, exchange rates and currency excess returns for a sample of eight advanced countries over the period 1980M1 to 2022M11. We find that the dynamics of the US dollar exchange rate is the main driver of currency excess returns. The...

We quantify the causal link between exchange rate movements and sovereign risk of 16 major emerging market economies (EMEs) by means of structural vector autoregressive models (SVARs) and conditional on data from 10/2004 through 12/2016. We apply a novel data-based identification approach of the...

In ecology, the concept of predation describes interdependent patterns of having one species (called the predator) killing and consuming another (the prey). Specifying the so-called functional response of prey populations to predation is an important matter of debate which is typically addressed...