The increasing availability of financial market data at intraday frequencies has not only led to the development of improved ex-post volatility measurements but has also inspired research into their potential value as an informa-tion source for longer horizon volatility forecasts. In this paper...

Dynamic models for credit rating transitions are important ingredients for dynamic credit risk analyses. We compare the properties of two such models that have recently been put forward. The models mainly differ in their treatment of systematic risk, which can be modeled either using discrete...

We present a model for hourly electricity load forecasting based on stochastically time-varying processes that are designed to account for changes in customer behaviour and in utility production efficiencies. The model is periodic: it consists of different equations and different parameters for...

Several Bayesian model combination schemes, including some novel approaches that simultaneously allow for parameter uncertainty, model uncertainty and robust time varying model weights, are compared in terms of forecast accuracy and economic gains using financial and macroeconomic time series....

We propose a new and simple methodology to estimate the loss function associated with experts' forecasts. Under the assumption of conditional normality of the data and the forecast distribution, the asymmetry parameter of the lin-lin and linex loss function can easily be estimated using a linear...

In the literature the effects of weather on electricity sales are well-documented. However, studies that have investigated the impact of weather on electricity prices are still scarce (e.g. Knittel and Roberts, 2005), partly because the wholesale power markets have only recently been...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'International Journal of Forecasting', 2009, 27, 282-303.<P> The sum of squared intraday returns provides an unbiased and almost error-free measure of ex-post volatility. In this paper we develop a nonlinear Autoregressive Fractionally...</p>

We present a simple new methodology to allow for time variation in volatilities using a recursive updating scheme similar to the familiar RiskMetrics approach. We update parameters using the score of the forecasting distribution rather than squared lagged observations. This allows the parameter...

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...

The paper investigates the impact of jumps in forecasting co-volatility, accommodating leverage effects. We modify the jump-robust two time scale covariance estimator of Boudt and Zhang (2013)such that the estimated matrix is positive definite. Using this approach we can disentangle the...