This paper compares the forecasting performance of three structural econometric models, namely the non-parametric, ARIMAX and the Kalman filter models, in predicting stock returns in an emerging market economy using South Africa as case study. The proposed models have different functional forms....

In many settings of empirical interest, time variation in the distribution parameters is important for capturing the dynamic behaviour of time series processes. Although the fitting of heavy tail distributions has become easier due to computational advances, the joint and explicit modelling of...

In this paper, we examine the directional predictability of excess stock market returns by lagged excess returns from industry portfolios and a number of other commonly used variables by means of dynamic probit models. We focus on the directional component of the market returns because, for...

Low-frequency financial returns can be modelled as centered around piecewise-constant trend functions which change at certain points in time. We propose a new stochastic time series framework which captures this feature. The main ingredient of our model is a hierarchically-ordered oscillatory...