One advantage of Bayesian estimation is its solid theoretical ground on model comparison, which relies heavily upon the accurate calculation of marginal likelihood. The Gelfand-Dey (1994) and Chib (1995) methods are two popular means of calculating marginal likelihood. A trade-o® exists between...

Recently, a large body of academic literature has focused on the area of stable distributions and their application potential for improving our understanding of the risk of hedge funds. At the same time, research has sprung up on standard Bayesian methods applied to hedge fund evaluation. Little...

This paper considers Bayesian variable selection in regressions with a large number of possibly highly correlated macroeconomic predictors. I show that acknowledging the correlation structure in the predictors can improve forecasts over existing popular Bayesian variable selection algorithms

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models use modern macroeconomic theory to explain and predict comovements of aggregate time series over the business cycle and to perform policy analysis. We explain how to use DSGE models for all three purposes — forecasting, story telling, and...

This book presents in detail methodologies for the Bayesian estimation of single-regime and regime-switching GARCH models. These models are widespread and essential tools in financial econometrics and have, until recently, mainly been estimated using the classical Maximum Likelihood technique....

This paper develops methods for automatic selection of variables in Bayesian vector autoregressions (VARs) using the Gibbs sampler. In particular, I provide computationally efficient algorithms for stochastic variable selection in generic linear and nonlinear models, as well as models of large...

A recent literature has developed that combines two prominent empirical approaches to ex ante policy evaluation: randomized controlled trials (RCT) and structural estimation. The RCT provides a “gold-standard" estimate of a particular treatment, but only of that treatment. Structural...

The deviance information criterion (DIC) has been widely used for Bayesian model comparison. In particular, a popular metric for comparing stochastic volatility models is the DIC based on the conditional likelihood — obtained by conditioning on the latent variables. However, some recent...

Recent articles suggest that a Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) with shrinkage is a good forecast device even when the number of variables is large. In this paper we evaluate different variants of the BVAR with respect to their forecast accuracy for euro area real GDP growth and HICP...

Sparse factor analysis comprises aspects of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, seeking to establish a parsimonious structure in the loadings matrix of the model. This task is related to the issue of determining the number of factors required for model representation, the question of...