Rationality of early release data is typically tested using linear regressions. Thus, failure to reject the null does not rule out the possibility of nonlinear dependence. This paper proposes two tests that have power against generic nonlinear alternatives. A Monte Carlo study shows that the...

The procedure for estimating probabilities of future investment returns using time-shifted indexes is based on the simple principle that a multi-dimensional conditional probability distribution can be envisioned involving investment total returns (for a single investment or a fixed portfolio of...

Quantile regression has become widely used in empirical macroeconomics, in particular for estimating and forecasting tail risks to macroeconomic indicators. In this paper we examine various choices in the specification of quantile regressions for macro applications, for example, choices related...

A bivariate second-order VAR model of money growth and inflation is specified and estimated by means of least squares. The bias of the parameter estimates is approximated in three ways and new, bias-reduced estimates are computed using the approximations. The effects of bias reduction on...

Contemporaneous inference from economic data releases for policy and business decisions has become increasingly relevant in the high pace of the information age. The released data are typically filtered to eliminate seasonal patterns to reveal underlying trends and cycles. The nature of economic...

The problem of finding appropriate weights to combine several density forecasts is an important issue that is currently being debated in the forecast combination literature. A recent paper by Hall and Mitchell (IJF, 2007) proposes to combine density forecasts with the weights obtained from...

We propose a new approach to mixed-frequency regressions in a high-dimensional environment that resorts to Group Lasso penalization and Bayesian techniques for estimation and inference. To improve the sparse recovery ability of the model, we also consider a Group Lasso with a spike-and-slab...

We propose the adaptive elastic net for estimating Vector Autoregressions. Unlike competing methods, this estimator preserves the standard structural-VAR toolkit but at the same time leads to accurate forecasts. We show validity of the bootstrap in constructing unconditional-on-model-selection...

The development of models for variables sampled at different frequencies has attracted substantial interest in the recent econometric literature. In this paper we provide an overview of the most common techniques, including bridge equations, Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) models, mixed frequency...

We consider unobserved components time series models where the components are stochastically evolving over time and are subject to stochastic volatility. It enables the disentanglement of dynamic structures in both the mean and the variance of the observed time series. We develop a simulated...