A growing number of empirical studies provides evidence that dynamic properties of macroeconomic time series have been changing over time. Model-based procedures for the measurement of business cycles should therefore allow model parameters to adapt over time. In this paper the time dependencies...

We consider the problem of smoothing data on two-dimensional grids with holes or gaps. Such grids are often referred to as difficult regions. Since the data is not observed on these locations, the gap is not part of the domain. We cannot apply standard smoothing methods since they smooth over...

We develop a score-driven time-varying parameter model where no particular parametric error distribution needs to be specified. The proposed method relies on a versatile spline-based density, which produces a score function that follows a natural cubic spline. This flexible approach nests the...

We develop a panel data model with stochastic dynamic processes to empirically verify the possible existence of the European crime drop. This time-varying effect can be captured by the stochastic trend and can be interpreted as the "potential" European crime drop. Due to the flexibility of our...

This paper introduces a novel simulation-based filtering method for general state space models. It allows for the computation of time-varying conditional means, quantiles, and modes, but also for the prediction of latent variables in general. The method relies on generating artificial samples of...

We analyze the role of industrial and non-industrial production sectors in the US economy by adopting a novel multilevel factor model. The proposed model is suitable for high-dimensional panels of economic time series and allows for interdependence structures across multiple sectors. The...

This paper proposes a novel time-series model with a non-stationary stochastic trend, locally explosive mixed causal non-causal dynamics and fat-tailed innovations. The model allows for a description of financial time-series that is consistent with financial theory, for a decomposition of the...

This paper considers a stochastic volatility model featuring an asymmetric stable error distribution and a novel way of accounting for the leverage effect. We adopt simulation-based methods to address key challenges in parameter estimation, the filtering of time-varying volatility, and...

The equivalence of the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition and the trend-cycle decomposition is well established. In this paper we argue that this equivalence is almost immediate when a Gaussian score-driven location model is considered. We also provide a natural extension towards heavy-tailed...

In economics and finance, speculative bubbles take the form of locally explosive dynamics that eventually collapse. We propose a test for the presence of speculative bubbles in the context of mixed causal-noncausal autoregressive processes. The test exploits the fact that bubbles are...