In this paper, we propose a novel consistent estimation method for the approximate factor model of Chamberlain and Rothschild (1983), with large cross-sectional and timeseries dimensions (N and T, respectively). Their model assumes that the r (fi N) largest eigenvalues of data covariance matrix...

Interpretability and stability are two important features that are desired in many contemporary big data applications arising in economics and finance. While the former is enjoyed to some extent by many existing forecasting approaches, the latter in the sense of controlling the fraction of...

This paper studies macroeconomic forecasting and variable selection using a folded-concave penalized regression with a very large number of predictors. The penalized regression approach leads to sparse estimates of the regression coefficients, and is applicable even if the dimensionality of the...

A Bayesian typically uses data and a prior to produce a posterior. We shall follow the opposite route, using data and the posterior information to reveal the prior. We apply the theory by inferring the Bank of England’s priors when forecasting UK inflation