In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, some risk management practitioners have advocated wider adoption of Bayesian inference to replace Value- at-Risk (VaR) models in order to minimize risk failures. Despite its limitations, the Bayesian methodology has significant advantages. Just...

In this essay, I argue about the relevance and the ultimate unity of the Bayesian approach in a neutral and agnostic manner. My main theme is that Bayesian data analysis is an effective tool for handling complex models, as proven by the increasing proportion of Bayesian studies in the applied...

Following Lancaster (2002), we propose a strategy to solve the incidental parameter problem. The method is demonstrated under a simple panel Poisson count model. We also extend the strategy to accomodate cases when information orthogonality is unavailable, such as the linear AR(p) panel model....

We provide a Bayesian analysis of models in which the unknown distribution of the outcomes is specified up to a set of conditional moment restrictions. This analysis is based on the nonparametric exponentially tilted empirical likelihood (ETEL) function, which is constructed to satisfy a...

Quantitative investment strategies are often selected from a broad class of candidate models estimated and tested on historical data. Standard statistical technique to prevent model overfitting such as out-sample back-testing turns out to be unreliable in the situation when selection is based on...

We utilize Bayesian model averaging to estimate a stochastic discount factor (SDF) for single-stock options. A Bayesian model averaging SDF outperforms reduced-form benchmark models in-sample and out-of-sample in pricing option return anomalies and portfolios. We document that the SDF is dense...

In this paper we discuss several aspects of simulation based Bayesian econometric inference. We start at an elementary level on basic concepts of Bayesian analysis; evaluating integrals by simulation methods is a crucial ingredient in Bayesian inference. Next, the most popular and well-known...

Quantitative investment strategies are often selected from a broad class of candidate models estimated and tested on historical data. Standard statistical technique to prevent model overfitting such as out-sample back-testing turns out to be unreliable in the situation when selection is based on...

We show that the minimum description length (MDL) criterion widely used to estimate lin- ear change-point (CP) models corresponds to the marginal likelihood of a Bayesian model with a specific class of prior distributions. This allows for results from the frequentist and Bayesian literatures to...

The academic literature literally contains hundreds of variables that seem to predict the cross-section of expected returns. This so-called ‘anomaly zoo' has caused many to question whether researchers are using the right tests of statistical significance. But, here's the thing: even if...