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...

We propose a new approach to deal with structural breaks in time series models. The key contribution is an alternative dynamic stochastic specification for the model parameters which describes potential breaks. After a break new parameter values are generated from a so-called baseline prior...

This discussion paper led to an article in the <I>Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics</I> (2009). Vol. 71, pages 683-713.<P> This paper discusses identification, specification, estimation and forecasting for a general class of periodic unobserved components time series models with stochastic...</p></i>

This discussion paper resulted in an article in <I>Economics Letters</I> (2012). Vol. 116(3), 322-325.<p> Using well-known GARCH models for density prediction of daily S&P 500 and Nikkei 225 index returns, a comparison is provided between frequentist and Bayesian estimation. No significant difference is...</p></i>

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...

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...

Adaptive Polar Sampling (APS) is proposed as a Markov chain Monte Carlomethod for Bayesian analysis of models with ill-behaved posteriordistributions. In order to sample efficiently from such a distribution,a location-scale transformation and a transformation to polarcoordinates are used. After...