We propose a Bayesian nonparametric model to estimate rating migration matrices and default probabilities using the reinforced urn processes (RUP) introduced in Muliere et al. (2000). The estimated default probability becomes our prior information in a parametric model for the prediction of the...

This paper shows that for five small commodity-exporting countries that have adopted inflation targeting monetary policies, world commodity price aggregates have predictive power for their CPI and PPI inflation, particularly once possible structural breaks are taken into account. This conclusion...

We develop methods for testing whether, in a finite sample, forecasts from nested models are equally accurate. Most prior work has focused on a null of equal accuracy in population — basically, whether the additional coefficients of the larger model are zero. Our asymptotic approximation...

We extend the asymmetric, stochastic, volatility model by modeling the return-volatility distribution nonparametrically. The novelty is modeling this distribution with an infinite mixture of Normals, where the mixture unknowns have a Dirichlet process prior. Cumulative Bayes factors show our...

A novel Bayesian method for inference in dynamic regression models is proposed where both the values of the regression coefficients and the importance of the variables are allowed to change over time. We focus on forecasting and so the parsimony of the model is important for good performance. A...

We introduce quasi-likelihood ratio tests for one sided multivariate hypotheses to evaluate the null that a parsimonious model performs equally well as a small number of models which nest the benchmark. The limiting distributions of the test statistics are non-standard. For critical values we...