In this paper we address the question whether countries on the African continent have lower average growth rates in real GDP per capita than countries in Asia and Latin America. In contrast to previous studies, we do not aggregate the data, nor do we a priori assign countries to clusters....

We put forward a statistical model for interpurchase times that takes into account all the current and past information available for all purchases as time continues to run along the calendar timescale. It delivers forecasts for the number of purchases in the next period and for the timing of...

We address the issue of time varying persistence of shocks to macroeconomic time series variables by proposing a new and parsimonious time series model. Our model assumes that this time varying persistence depends on a linear combination of lagged explanatory variables, where this combination...

We propose a new periodic autoregressive model for seasonally observed time series, where the number of seasons can potentially be very large. The main novelty is that we collect the periodic parameters in a second-level stochastic model. This leads to a random-coefficient periodic...

Experts can rely on statistical model forecasts when creating their own forecasts. Usually it is not known what experts actually do. In this paper we focus on three questions, which we try to answer given the availability of expert forecasts and model forecasts. First, is the expert forecast...

Due to high and low volatility periods, time series of absolute returns experience temporary level shifts (that is, periods with outliers) which differ in length and size. In this paper we put forward a new model which can describe and forecast the location and size of such level shifts. Our so...

Forecasts of key macroeconomic variables may lead to policy changes of governments, central banks and other economic agents. Policy changes in turn lead to structural changes in macroeconomic time series models. To describe this phenomenon we introduce a logistic smooth transition autoregressive...

Using the standard linear model as a base, a unified theory of Bayesian Analyses of Cointegration Models is constructed. This is achieved by defining (natural conjugate) priors in the linear model and using the implied priors for the cointegration model. Using these priors, posterior results for...

Empirical analysis of individual response behavior is sometimes limited due to the lack of explanatory variables at the individual level. In this paper we put forward a new approach to estimate the effects of covariates on individual response, where the covariates are unknown at the individual...

We propose a new reference price framework for brand choice. In this framework, we employ a Markov-switching process with an absorbing state to model unobserved price recall of households. Reference prices result from the prices households are able to remember. Our model can be used to learn how...