Decision-makers often consult different experts to build reliable forecasts on variables of interest. Combining more opinions and calibrating them to maximize the forecast accuracy is consequently a crucial issue in several economic problems. This paper applies a Bayesian beta mixture model to...

The paper outlines a methodology for analyzing daily stock returns that relinquishes the assumption of global stationarity. Giving up this common working hypothesis reflects our belief that fundamental features of the financial markets are continuously and significantly changing. Our approach...

Implications of nonlinearity, nonstationarity and misspecification are considered from a forecasting perspective. My model allows for small departures from the martingale difference sequence hypothesis by including a nonlinear component, formulated as a general, integrable transformation of the...

This paper proposes an algorithm to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of structural parameters in discrete games with multiple equilibria. The method combines a genetic algorithm (GA) with a pseudo maximum likelihood (PML) procedure. The GA searches efficiently over the huge space of possible...

This paper offers a general and comprehensive definition of the day-of-the-week effect. Using symbolic dynamics, we develop a unique test based on ordinal patterns in order to detect it. This test uncovers the fact that the so-called 'day-of-the-week' effect is partly an artifact of the hidden...

Nonlinear estimation of the gravity model with Poisson-type regression methods has become popular for modelling international trade flows, because it permits a better accounting for zero flows and extreme values in the distribution tail. Nevertheless, as trade flows are not independent from each...

In economics, rank-size regressions provide popular estimators of tail exponents of heavy-tailed distributions. We discuss the properties of this approach when the tail of the distribution is regularly varying rather than strictly Pareto. The estimator then over-estimates the true value in the...

Several modified estimation methods of the memory parameter have been introduced in the past years. They aim to decrease the upward bias of the memory parameter in cases of low frequency contaminations or an additive noise component, especially in situations with a short-memory process being...

The cohesiveness of constituent nations in a confederation such as the Eurozone depends on their equally shared experiences. In terms of household incomes, commonality of distribution across those constituent nations with that of the Eurozone as an entity in itself is of the essence. Generally,...

This paper proposes plug-in bandwidth selection for kernel density estimation with discrete data via minimization of mean summed square error. Simulation results show that the plug-in bandwidths perform well, relative to cross-validated bandwidths, in non-uniform designs. We further find that...