We describe and assess the usefulness of a newly-constructed database of electronic payments, comprised of debit and credit card transactions as well cheques that clear through the banking system, as indicators of current GDP growth. Apart from capturing a broad range of spending activity, these...

GARCH models and their variants are usually estimated using quasi-Maximum Likelihood (QML). Recent work has shown that by using estimates of quadratic variation, for example from the daily realized volatility, it is possible to estimate these models in a different way which incorporates the...

This paper applies new diagnostics to the Bank of England's pioneering density forecasts (fan charts). We compute their implicit probability forecast for annual rates of inflation and output growth that exceed a given threshold (in this case, the target inflation rate and 2.5% respectively.)...

Financial returns typically display heavy tails and some skewness, and conditional variance models with these features often outperform more limited models. The difference in performance may be especially important in estimating quantities that depend on tail features, including risk measures...

This paper proposes a new class of asymmetric Student-t (AST) distributions, and investigates its properties, gives procedures for estimation, and indicates applications in financial econometrics. We derive analytical expressions for the cdf, quantile function, moments, and quantities useful in...

This paper investigates a number of general phenomena connected with consumer behaviour in response to a severe economic shock, using billions of French card transactions measured before and during the COVID-19 epidemic. We examine changes in consumer mobility, anticipatory behaviour in response...

Using the tail index of returns on U.S. equities as a summary measure of extreme behavior, we examine changes in the equity markets surrounding the development of program trading for portfolio insurance, the crash of 1987, and the subsequent introduction of circuit breakers and other changes in...

A probabilistic forecast is the estimated probability with which a future event will satisfy a specified criterion. One interesting feature of such forecasts is their calibration, or the match between predicted probabilities and actual outcome probabilities. Calibration has been evaluated in the...

The geographical pattern of consumers’ expenditures, whether made on-site or online, has implications for the location of economic activity and regional economic development. Data limitations have however limited our knowledge of this aspect of consumer behaviour. This paper uses transaction...

Different causal mechanisms have been proposed to link commodity prices and exchange rates, with opposing implications. We examine these causal relationships empirically, using data on three commodities (crude oil, gold, copper) and four countries (Canada, Australia, Norway, Chile), over the...