This discussion paper has resulted in a publication in the <I>Journal of Business and Economic Statistics<I>.<p>In this discussion paper we introduce time-varying parameters in the dynamic Nelson–Siegel yield curve model for the simultaneous analysis and forecasting of interest rates of different...</p></i></i>

We consider the dynamic factor model where the loading matrix, the dynamic factors and the disturbances are treated as latent stochastic processes. We present empirical Bayes methods that enable the efficient shrinkage-based estimation of the loadings and the factors. We show that our estimates...

We propose a new model for dynamic volatilities and correlations of skewed and heavy-tailed data. Our model endows the Generalized Hyperbolic distribution with time-varying parameters driven by the score of the observation density function. The key novelty in our approach is the fact that the...

We consider the problem of smoothing data on two-dimensional grids with holes or gaps. Such grids are often referred to as difficult regions. Since the data is not observed on these locations, the gap is not part of the domain. We cannot apply standard smoothing methods since they smooth over...

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/jbes.2011.10070">'Journal of Business & Economic Statistics'</A>, 29(4), 552-63.<P>We propose a new class of observation-driven time-varying parameter models for dynamic volatilities and correlations to handle time series from heavy-tailed distributions. The model adopts...</p></a>

We introduce a nonlinear semi-parametric model that allows for the robust filtering of a common stochastic trend in a multivariate system of cointegrated time series. The observation-driven stochastic trend can be specified using flexible updating mechanisms. The model provides a general...

A new model for time-varying spatial dependencies is introduced. It forms an extension to the popular spatial lag model and can be estimated conveniently by maximum likelihood. The spatial dependence parameter is assumed to follow a generalized autoregressive score (GAS) process. The theoretical...