Likelihoods and posteriors of econometric models with strong endogeneity and weak instruments may exhibit rather non-elliptical contours in the parameter space. This feature also holds for cointegration models when near non-stationarity occurs and determining the number of cointegrating...

In Hoogerheide, Kaashoek and Van Dijk (2002) the class of neural network sampling methods is introduced to sample from a target (posterior) distribution that may be multi-modal or skew, or exhibit strong correlation among the parameters. In these methods the neural network is used as an...

Adaptive Polar Sampling (APS) is proposed as a Markov chain Monte Carlo method for Bayesian analysis of models with ill-behaved posterior distributions. In order to sample efficiently from such a distribution, a location-scale transformation and a transformation to polar coordinates are used....

A major problem in applying neural networks is specifying the size of the network. Even for moderately sized networks the number of parameters may become large compared to the number of data. In this paper network performance is examined while reducing the size of the network through the use of...

Several lessons learnt from a Bayesian analysis of basic macroeconomic time series models are presented for the situation where some model parameters have substantial posterior probability near the boundary of the parameter region. This feature refers to near-instability within dynamic models,...

Stylized facts show that average growth rates of US per capita consumption and income differ in recession and expansion periods. Since a linear combination of such series does not have to be a constant mean process, standard cointegration analysis between the variables to examine the permanent...

Several frequentist and Bayesian model averaging schemes, including a new one that simultaneously allows for parameter uncertainty, model uncertainty and time varying model weights, are compared in terms of forecast accuracy over a set of simulation experiments. Artificial data are generated,...

Internationally operating firms naturally face the decision whether or not to hedge the currency risk implied by foreign investments. In a recent paper, Bos, Mahieu and van Dijk evaluate the returns from optimal and alternative currency hedging strategies, for a series of 7 models, using...

The failure to describe the time series behaviour of most real exchange rates as temporary deviations from fixed long-term means may be due to time variation of the equilibria themselves, see Engel (2000). We implement this idea using an unobserved components model and decompose the observations...

Economic forecasts and policy decisions are often informed by empirical analysis based on econometric models. However, inference based upon a single model, when several viable models exist, limits its usefulness. Taking account of model uncertainty, a Bayesian model averaging procedure is...