This paper illustrates the Support Vector Method for the classification problem with two and more classes. In particular, the multi-class classification Support Vector Method of Weston and Watkins (1998) is correctly formulated as a quadratic optimization problem. Then, the method is applied to...

When comparing methods for classification, often the rating relies on their prediction accuracy alone. One reason for this is that this is the aspect that can be most easily measured. Yet, often one wants to learn more about the problem than only how to predict. The interpretation of the...

Econometric models are a widely used and powerful tool in macroeconomic analysis and forecasting. Admittedly, their acceptance by the scientific community has had some hard times during the seventies and eighties: a general decline in the reputation of macroeconomics, the Lucas critique, and...

Research in combining of economic forecasts made by several research institutes on the same economic variable has focused on estimation, hoping that the combined forecast will be improved by taking into account the expert opinions of the institutes. We provide a confidence interval on the...

Die finanzwirtschaftliche Bedeutung von Kreditausfällen und Kreditausfall- Prognosen bedarf keiner weiteren Begründung. Dieser Bedeutung angemessen, gibt es inzwischen eine Vielzahl von Modellen und Verfahren, die Ausfallwahrscheinlichkeiten von Bankkrediten oder Industrieanleihen zu...

Most of the literature on combination of forecasts deals with the assumption of unbiased individual forecasts. Here, we consider the case of biased forecasts and discuss two different combination techniques resulting in an unbiased forecast. On the one hand we correct the individual forecasts,...

In this paper we use 4 different time series models to forecast sales in a goods management system. We use a variety of forecast combining techniques and measure the forecast quality by applying symmetric and asymmetric forecast quality measures. Simple, rank-, and criteria-based combining...