In 1998 Hungary embarked on a course of comprehensive pension reform. The reforms are likely to change the distribution of incomes of future generations. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. From a policy point of view, we analyse poverty and income inequality among pensioners in Hungary...

Copulas offer financial risk managers a powerful tool to model the dependence between the different elements of a portfolio and are preferable to the traditional, correlation-based approach. In this paper we show the importance of selecting an accurate copula for risk management. We extend...

Evidence of stock return predictability by financial ratios is still controversial as documented by inconsistent results for in-sample and out-of-sample regressions as well as substantial parameter instability. This paper shows that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if the...

It is widely known that significant in-sample evidence of predictability does not guarantee significant out-of-sample predictability. This is often interpreted as an indication that in-sample evidence is likely to be spurious and should be discounted. In this Paper we question this conventional...

We develop a twofold analysis of how the information provided by several economic indicators can be used in Markov-switching dynamic factor models to identify the business cycle turning points. First, we compare the performance of a fully non- linear multivariate specification (one-step...

We extend the Markov-switching dynamic factor model to account for some of the specificities of the day-to-day monitoring of economic developments from macroeconomic indicators, such as ragged edges and mixed frequencies. We examine the theoretical benefits of this extension and corroborate the...

We examine the finite-sample performance of small versus large scale dynamic factor models. Our Monte Carlo analysis reveals that small scale factor models out-perform large scale models in factor estimation and forecasting for high levels of cross-correlation across the idiosyncratic errors of...

To perform real-time business cycle inferences and forecasts of GDP growth rates in the Euro area, we use an extension of the Markov-switching dynamic factor models that accounts for the specificities of the day to day monitoring of economic developments such as ragged edges, mixed frequencies...

We set out a model to compute short-term forecasts of the euro area GDP growth in real-time. To allow for forecast evaluation, we construct a real-time data set that changes for each vintage date and includes the exact information that was available at the time of each forecast. With this data...

One of the most extended empirical stylized facts about output dynamics in the United States is the positive autocorrelation of output growth. This paper shows that the positive autocorrelation can be better captured by shifts between business cycle states rather than by the standard view of...