This paper has led to a publication in <I>Applied Financial Economics</I>, 2013, 23(9), 749-765.<P> This paper assesses the performance of a number of long-term interest rate forecast approaches, namely time series models, structural economic models, expert forecasts and combinations thereof. The...</p></i>

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...

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...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <I>International Journal of Forecasting</I> (2013). Volume 29(4), pages 622-627.<P> It is common practice to evaluate fixed-event forecast revisions in macroeconomics by regressing current forecast revisions on one-period lagged forecast revisions....</p></i>

We introduce a new model for time-varying spatial dependence. The model extends the well-known static spatial lag model. All parameters can be estimated conveniently by maximum likelihood. We establish the theoretical properties of the model and show that the maximum likelihood estimator for the...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the <I>International Journal of Forecasting</I> (2014). Volume 30, pages 572-584.<P> We explore a new approach to the forecasting of macroeconomic variables based on a dynamic factor state space analysis. Key economic variables are modeled jointly with...</p></i>

Factor construction methods are widely used to summarize a large panel of variables by means of a relatively small number of representative factors. We propose a novel factor construction procedure that enjoys the properties of robustness to outliers and of sparsity; that is, having relatively...

The daily average price of electricity represents the price of electricity to be delivered over the full next day and serves as a key reference price in the electricity market. It is an aggregate that equals the average of hourly prices for delivery during each of the 24 individual hours. This...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the 'Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control' (forthcoming).<P> This paper develops a testing framework for comparing the predictive accuracy of copula-based multivariate density forecasts, focusing on a specific part of the joint distribution....</p>