the forecasting ability of correlations implied in foreign exchange options abstract this paper evaluates the forecasting accuracy of correlations derived from implied volatilities in dollar mark dollar yen and mark yen options from january 1989 to may 1995 as a forecast of realized correlation between the dollar mark and dollar yen implied correlation is compared against three alternative forecasts based on time series data historical correlation riskmetrics exponentially weighted moving average correlation and correlation estimated using a bivariate garch 1 1 model at the 1 month and 3 month forecast horizons we find that implied correlation outperforms often significantly these alternative forecasts in combinations implied correlation always incrementally improves the performance of other forecasts but not the converse in certain cases historically based forecasts contribute no incremental information to implied forecasts the superiority of the implied correlation forecast holds even when forecast errors are weighted by realized variances reflecting correlation s contribution to the dollar variance of a multicurrency portfolio

answering the skeptics yes standard volatility models do provide accurate forecasts a voluminous literature has emerged for modeling the temporal dependencies in financial market volatility using arch and stochastic volatility models while most of these studies have documented highly significant in sample parameter estimates and pronounced intertemporal volatility persistence traditional ex post forecast evaluation criteria suggest that the models provide seemingly poor volatility forecasts contrary to this contention we show that volatility models produce strikingly accurate interdaily forecasts for the latent volatility factor that would be of interest in most financial applications new methods for improved ex post interdaily volatility measurements based on high frequency intradaily data are also discussed

spot and forward volatility in foreign exchange this paper investigates the empirical relation between spot and forward implied volatility in foreign exchange we formulate and test the forward volatility unbiasedness hypothesis which is the volatility analogue to the extensively researched hypothesis of unbiasedness in forward exchange rates using a new data set of spot implied volatility quoted on over the counter currency options we compute the forward implied volatility that corresponds to the forward contract on future spot implied volatility known as a forward volatility agreement we nd statistically signi cant evidence that forward implied volatility is a systematically biased predictor that overestimates future spot implied volatility the bias in forward volatility generates high economic value to an investor exploiting predictability in the returns to volatility speculation and indicates the presence of predictable volatility term premiums in foreign exchange

the determinants of occupational success in britain this paper is concerned with measuring the true impact of certain human capital variables on an individual s occupational position the particular variables which are analysed are training qualifications and spells of sickness and unemployment the longitudinal nature of the data enables us to control for all relevant individual attributes which remain fixed over the period of the sample this is vitally important because these attributes are strongly correlated with the variables of interest and would seriously corrupt estimates derived from a single cross section a method of generating consistent estimates as n oo t fixed for a dynamic model with fixed effects is also illustrated

is there an energy efficiency gap many analysts have argued that energy efficiency investments offer an enormous win win opportunity to both reduce negative externalities and save money this overview paper presents a simple model of investment in energy using capital stock with two types of market failures first uninternalized externalities from energy consumption and second forces such as imperfect information that cause consumers and firms not to exploit privately profitable energy efficiency investments the model clarifies that only if the second type of market failure cannot be addressed directly through mechanisms such as information provision energy efficiency subsidies and standards may be merited this chapter therefore reviews the empirical work on the magnitude of profitable unexploited energy efficiency investments a literature which frequently does not meet modern standards for credibly estimating the net present value of energy cost savings and often leaves other benefits and costs unmeasured these problems notwithstanding recent empirical work in a variety of contexts implies that on average the magnitude of profitable unexploited investment opportunities is much smaller than engineering accounting studies suggest finally there is tremendous opportunity and need for policy relevant research that utilizes randomized controlled trials and quasi experimental techniques to estimate the returns to energy efficiency investments and the welfare effects of energy efficiency programs

estimating the correlation structure of international share prices recently the case for international portfolio diversification has been convincingly argued in the framework of mean variance portfolio analysis by a number of researchers however virtually no empirical documentation exists concerning the best method for estimating the correlation structure of international share prices in this paper 12 models for estimating the international correlation matrix are presented and empirically tested relative to full historical extrapolation the major evaluation criteria are the mean squared error and stochastic dominance based on the frequency distribution of the squared forecast errors the results indicate that the national mean model strictly dominates all the others in terms of forecasting accuracy in the last fifteen years or so a number of researchers have convincingly argued the case for international portfolio diversification as opposed to purely domestic diversification in the framework of mean variance portfolio analysis see e g grubel 4 levy and sarnat 8 solnik 12 mcdonald 10 lessard 6 and subrahmanyam 15 1 in spite of the emerging consensus in the academic and investment communities that investors can benefit from international diversification in terms of a more efficient risk return tradeoff virtually no empirical documentation exists concerning the best method for estimating the correlation structure of international share prices since estimating this correlation structure is a necessary precondition for being able to apply modern portfolio theory to international investments empirical examination is of major importance moreover only through empirical examination of the correlation structure will the effort to devise a simple algorithm that can be used to solve for the optimal international portfolio be facilitated in order to trace out the set of ex ante efficient international porffolios using the tenets of modern portfolio theory the investor must obtain accurate estimates of the expected return and the variance of return for each domestic and foreign security and he must also obtain accurate estimates of the correlation coefficients of the returns between each pair of securities stated in terms of his numeraire

overnight information and stochastic volatility a study of european and us stock exchanges abstract this paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the predictive ability of information accumulated during nontrading hours for a set of european and us stock indexes we introduce a stochastic volatility model which conditions on lagged overnight information distinguishes between the nontrading periods of weeknights weekends holidays and long weekends and allows for an asymmetric leverage effect on the impact of overnight news we implement bayesian methods for estimation and ranking of the empirical models and find two key results i there is substantial predictive ability in financial information accumulated during nontrading hours and ii the performance of stochastic volatility models improves considerably by separating the asymmetric impact of positive and negative news made available over weeknights weekends holidays and long weekends

catastrophic natural disasters and economic growth this paper examines the short and long run average causal impact of catastrophic natural disasters on economic growth by combining information from comparative case studies the counterfactual of the cases studied is assessed by constructing synthetic control groups taking advantage of the fact that the timing of large sudden natural disasters is an exogenous event it is found that only extremely large disasters have a negative effect on output both in the short and long run however this result appears in two events where radical political revolutions followed the natural disasters once these political changes are controlled for even extremely large disasters do not display any significant effect on economic growth it is also found that smaller but still very large natural disasters have no discernible effect on output

conditional heteroscedasticity in time series of stock returns evidence and forecasts this article presents new evidence about the time series behavior of stock prices daily return series exhibit significant levels of second order dependence and they cannot be modeled as linear white noise processes a reasonable return generating process is empirically shown to be a first order autoregressive process with conditionally heteroskedastic innovations in particular generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic garch 1 1 processes fit to data very satisfactorily various out of sample forecasts of monthly return variances are generated and compared statistically forecasts based on the garch model are found to be superior copyright 1989 by the university of chicago

under the cover of darkness how ambient light influences criminal activity abstract we exploit daylight saving time dst as an exogenous shock to daylight using both the discontinuous nature of the policy and the 2007 extension of dst to consider the impact of light on criminal activity regression discontinuity estimates show a 7 decrease in robberies following the shift to dst as expected effects are largest during the hours directly affected by the shift in daylight we discuss our findings within the context of criminal decision making and labor supply and estimate that the 2007 dst extension resulted in 59 million in annual social cost savings from avoided robberies

rationality of inflation output forecasts of mms survey international evidence we analyse the individual rationality of inflation and output forecasts from money market survey mms for a group of g7 countries and eu under asymmetric univariate linlin and linex loss functions we also test for joint rationality of inflation output forecasts using the forecast rationality test under multivariate asymmetric loss functions proposed by ulu 2013 our results indicate that rationality is often rejected under symmetric loss and results improve towards rationality when asymmetric loss functions are assumed the assumption of multivariate asymmetric loss compared to univariate asymmetric loss provides further evidence towards rationality we also analyse directional forecast accuracy of the inflation and output forecasts and find that the inflation output forecasts of mms are valuable when considered both jointly and separately

hansen and sargent s recursive models of dynamic linear economies a review essay lars peter hansen and thomas j sargent s book recursive models of dynamic linear economies exposits extends and applies methods for solution and analysis of dynamic stochastic linear quadratic models the book which can be used as a monograph or in a graduate course integrates theory econometrics and computation this essay provides a summary and offers some mild complaints about material not included in what is already a remarkably comprehensive book

crack spread hedging accounting for time varying volatility spillovers in the energy futures markets crude oil heating oil and unleaded gasoline futures contracts are simultaneously analysed for their effectiveness in reducing price volatility for an energy trader a conceptual model is developed for a trader hedging the crack spread various hedge ratio estimation techniques are compared to a multivariate garch model that directly incorporates the time to maturity effect often found in futures markets modelling of the time variation in hedge ratios via the multivariate garch methodology and thus taking into account volatility spillovers between markets is shown to result in significant reductions in uncertainty even while accounting for trading costs copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

monitoring and forecasting currency crises can we improve forecasts of currency crises by using a large number of predictors which economic variables are most important to predict currency crises this paper evaluates the performance of traditional leading indicators and a new diffusion index di method as early warning systems to monitor the risk and forecast the likelihood of the recent currency crises in east asia we find that relative to traditional leading indicators such as money multipliers terms of trade etc the diffusion index performs quite well in real time with a higher probability of providing correct signals we also find that the economic variables that help in forecasting future crises are output growth the balance of payments interest rates and money growth and that their relative importance changes dramatically around the time of the crises

multivariate density forecast evaluation and calibration in financial risk management high frequency returns on foreign exchange we provide a framework for evaluating and improving multivariate density forecasts among other things the multivariate framework lets us evaluate the adequacy of density forecasts involving cross variable interactions such as time varying conditional correlations we also provide conditions under which a technique of density forecast calibration can be used to improve deficient density forecasts and we show how the calibration method can be used to generate good density forecasts from econometric models even when the conditional density is unknown finally motivated by recent advances in financial risk management we provide a detailed application to multivariate high frequency exchange rate density forecasts

nonlinear forecasting analysis using diffusion indexes an application to japan this paper extends the diffusion index di forecast approach of stock and watson 1998 2002 to the case of possibly nonlinear dynamic factor models when the number of series is large a two step procedure based onthe method of principal components is useful since it allows wide variety of nonlinearity in the factors the factors extracted from a large japanese data suggest some evidence of nonlinear structure furthermore both the linear and nonlinear di forecasts in japan outperform traditional time series forecasts while the linear di forecast in most cases performs as well as the nonlinear di forecast

volatility behavior of oil industrial commodity and stock markets in a regime switching environment abstract this study supplements previous regime switching studies on wti crude oil and finds two possible volatility regimes for the strategic commodity prices of brent oil wti oil copper gold and silver and the s p 500 index but with varying high to low volatility ratios the dynamic conditional correlations dccs indicate increasing correlations among all the commodities since the 2003 iraq war but decreasing correlations with the s p 500 index the commodities also show different volatility persistence responses to financial and geopolitical crises while the s p 500 index responds to both financial and geopolitical crises implications are discussed

a nonparametric garch model of crude oil price return volatility the use of parametric garch models to characterise crude oil price volatility is widely observed in the empirical literature in this paper we consider an alternative approach involving nonparametric method to model and forecast oil price return volatility focusing on two crude oil markets brent and west texas intermediate wti we show that the out of sample volatility forecast of the nonparametric garch model yields superior performance relative to an extensive class of parametric garch models these results are supported by the use of robust loss functions and the hansen s 2005 superior predictive ability test the improvement in forecasting accuracy of oil price return volatility based on the nonparametric garch model suggests that this method offers an attractive and viable alternative to the commonly used parametric garch models

the expectation hypothesis of the term structure of very short term rates statistical tests and economic value this paper re examines the validity of the expectation hypothesis eh of the term structure of us repo rates ranging in maturity from overnight to three months we extend the work of longstaff 2000a in two directions i we implement statistical tests designed to increase test power in this context ii more importantly we assess the economic value of departures from the eh based on criteria of profitability and economic significance in the context of a simple trading strategy the eh is rejected throughout the term structure examined on the basis of the statistical tests however the results of our economic analysis are favorable to the eh suggesting that the statistical rejections of the eh in the repo market are economically insignificant

directional accuracy forecasting error and the profitability of currency trading model based evidence three models the flexible price monetary model ppp and a univariate arima model are estimated for 45 currency pairs to find out if the profitability of forecasting based currency trading is more related to the ability of the underlying model to predict the direction of change than the magnitude of the forecasting error theoretical considerations show that a correct prediction of the direction of change is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a profitable trade the results of the exercise indicate that profitability is more strongly correlated with directional accuracy than with the magnitude of the error

investing under model uncertainty decision based evaluation of exchange rate forecasts in the us uk and japan we evaluate the forecast performance of a range of theory based and atheoretical models explaining exchange rates in the us uk and japan a decision making environment is fully described for an investor who optimally allocates portfolio shares to domestic and foreign assets methods necessary to compute and use forecasts in this context are proposed including the means of combining density forecasts to deal with model uncertainty an out of sample forecast evaluation exercise is described using both statistical criteria and decision based criteria the theory based models are found to perform relatively well when their forecasts are judged by their economic value

asymmetric effect of basis on dynamic futures hedging empirical evidence from commodity markets abstract the dynamic minimum variance hedge ratios mvhrs have been commonly estimated using the bivariate garch model that overlooks the basis effect on the time varying variance covariance of spot and futures returns this paper proposes an alternative specification of the bgarch model in which the effect is incorporated for estimating mvhrs empirical investigation in commodity markets suggests that the basis effect is asymmetric i e the positive basis has greater impact than the negative basis on the variance and covariance structure both in sample and out of sample comparisons of the mvhr performance reveal that the model with the asymmetric effect provides greater risk reduction than the conventional models illustrating importance of the asymmetric effect when modeling the joint dynamics of spot and futures returns and hence estimating hedging strategies

forecasting stock return variance toward an understanding of stochastic implied volatilities we examine the behavior of measured variances from the options market and the underlying stock market under the joint hypotheses that markets are informationally efficient and that option prices are explained by a particular asset pricing model forecasts from time series models of the stockreturn process should not have predictive content given the market forecast as embodied in option prices both in sample and out of sample tests suggest that this hypothesis can be rejected using simulations we show that biases inherent in the procedure we use to imply variances cannot explain this result thus we provide evidence inconsistent with the orthogonality restrictions of option pricing models that assume that variance risk is unpriced these results also have implicationsfor optimal variance forecast rules

efficiency with costly information a study of mutual fund performance 1965 1984 if information is costly to collect and implement then it is efficient for trades by informed investors to occur at prices sufficiently different from full information prices to compensate them for the cost of becoming informed this notion is tested by evaluating investment performance in the mutual fund industry over a 20 year period the study finds evidence that is consistent with optimal trading in efficient markets risk adjusted returns in the mutual fund industry net of fees and expenses are comparable to returns available in index funds and portfolio turnover and management fees are unrelated to fund performance

volatility in crude oil futures a comparison of the predictive ability of garch and implied volatility models the wti future contract quoted at the nymex is the most actively traded instrument in the energy sector this paper compares the predictive ability of two approaches which can be used to forecast volatility garch type models where forecasts are obtained after estimating time series models and an implied volatility model where forecasts are obtained by inverting one of the models used to price options although the main scope of the research discussed here is to evaluate which model produces the best forecast of volatility for the wti future contract evaluated according to statistical and regression based criteria we also investigate whether volatility of the oil futures are affected by asymmetric effects whether parameters of the garch models are influenced by the distribution of the errors and whether allowing for a time varying long run mean in the volatility produces any improvement on the forecast obtained from garch models

comparative forecasting performance of symmetric and asymmetric conditional volatility models of an exchange rate abstract the relative out of sample forecasting quality of symmetric and asymmetric conditional volatility models of an exchange rate differs according to the symmetric and asymmetric evaluation criteria both symmetric and asymmetric forecast competitors of currency volatility are biased and systematically over predict volatility

asymmetry loss aversion and forecasting conditional volatility models such as garch have been used extensively in financial applications to capture predictable variation in the second moment of asset returns however with recent theoretical literature emphasising the loss averse nature of agents this paper considers models which capture time variation in the second lower partial moment utility based evaluation is carried out on several approaches to modelling the conditional second order lower partial moment or semi variance including distribution and regime based models the findings show that when agents are loss averse

the empirical foundations of the arbitrage pricing theory abstract this paper uses maximum likelihood factor analysis of large cross sections to examine the validity of the arbitrage pricing theory apt we are unable to explain the expected returns on firm size portfolios although we do explain the expected returns on portfolios formed on the basis of dividend yield and own variance where risk adjustment using the usual capm market proxies fails we also compare alternate versions of the apt and sharply reject the hypothesis that basis portfolios formed to mimic the factors span the mean variance frontier of the individual assets

spillover health effects of energy efficiency investments quasi experimental evidence from the los angeles led streetlight program abstract payback estimates of energy efficiency investments often ignore public health externalities this is problematic in cases where spillover health effects are substantial such as when the application of new technology alters environmental exposures when health externalities are included in return on investment calculations energy efficiency programs may look more or less attractive than suggested by conventional energy savings only estimates this analysis exploits the quasi experiment provided by the 2009 los angeles la led streetlight efficiency program to investigate the returns on investments inclusive of an originally estimated health externality using the synthetic control method we find that the led streetlight program is associated with a lagged increase in breast cancer mortality of 0 479 per 100 000 inclusive of the effects of leds on breast cancer and avoided carbon emissions the la led program provides a 146 2 10 year return compared to 118 2 when health outcomes and carbon emissions are ignored

exchange rate predictability the main goal of this article is to provide an answer to the question does anything forecast exchange rates and if so which variables it is well known that exchange rate fluctuations are very difficult to predict using economic models and that a random walk forecasts exchange rates better than any economic model the meese and rogoff puzzle however the recent literature has identified a series of fundamentals methodologies that claim to have resolved the puzzle this article provides a critical review of the recent literature on exchange rate forecasting and illustrates the new methodologies and fundamentals that have been recently proposed in an up to date thorough empirical analysis overall our analysis of the literature and the data suggests that the answer to the question are exchange rates predictable is it depends on the choice of predictor forecast horizon sample period model and forecast evaluation method predictability is most apparent when one or more of the following hold the predictors are taylor rule or net foreign assets the model is linear and a small number of parameters are estimated the toughest benchmark is the random walk without drift

multivariate proxies and asset pricing relations abstract a framework is developed in which inferences can be made about the validity of an equilibrium asset pricing relation even though the central aggregate in this relation is unobservable a multivariate proxy for the true market portfolio consisting of an equal weighted stock index and a long term government bond index is employed in an investigation of the sharpe lintner capm the empirical evidence suggests that we can reject the joint hypothesis that a capm is valid and b multiple correlation between the true market portfolio and proxy assets exceeds 0 7 connections to the equilibrium factor pricing literature are also explored

a utility based comparison of some models of exchange rate volatility abstract when estimates of variances are used to make asset allocation decisions underestimates of population variances lead to lower expected utility than equivalent overestimates a utility based criterion is asymmetric unlike standard criteria such as mean squared error to illustrate how to estimate a utility based criterion we use five bilateral weekly dollar exchange rates 1973 1989 and the corresponding pair of eurodeposit rates of homoskedastic garch autoregressive and non parametric models for the conditional variance of each exchange rate garch models tend to produce the highest utility on average a mean squared error criterion also favors garch but not as sharply

some empirical tests of the theory of arbitrage pricing we estimate the parameters of ross s arbitrage pricing theory apt using daily return data during the 1963 78 period we compare the evidence on the apt and the capital asset pricing model capm as implemented by market indices and find that the apt performs well the theory is further supported in that estimated expected returns depend on estimated factor loadings and variables such as own variance and firm size do not contribute additional explanatory power to that of the factor loadings

tests of asset pricing with time varying expected risk premiums and market betas tests of asset pricing models are developed that allow expected risk premiums and market betas to vary over time these tests exploit the relation between expected excess returns and current market values using weekly data for 1963 through 1982 on ten common stock portfolios formed according to equity capitalization a single risk premium model is not rejected if the expected premium is time varying and is not constrained to correspond to a market factor conditional mean variance efficiency of a value weighted stock index is rejected and the rejection is insensitive to how much variability of expected risk premiums is assumed financial economists have studied valuation models in which securities expected returns are related to the covariances of unanticipated returns with the return on the market portfolio or with other risk factors empirical tests of such models typically have employed unconditional sample moments of returns recent studies provide mounting evidence that expected returns change over time with information such evidence presents an opportunity to develop new approaches for evaluating and implementing asset pricing models that exploit this time variation this paper presents new tests of financial valuation models in which expected returns are allowed to vary over time time series of relative

untangling supply and demand in occupational choice in this paper we present an econometric framework for modeling occupational choice that allows us to separately and simultaneously model supply side and demand side influences whilst allowing for potential ordering with regard to skill levels across occupations

optimal binary prediction for group decision making we address the problem of optimally forecasting a binary variable for a heterogeneous group of decision makers facing various binary decision problems that are tied together only by the unknown outcome a typical example is a weather forecaster who needs to estimate the probability of rain tomorrow and then report it to the public given a conditional probability model for the outcome of interest e g logit or probit we introduce the idea of maximum welfare estimation and derive conditions under which traditional estimators such as maximum likelihood or nonlinear least squares are asymptotically socially optimal even when the underlying model is misspecified

forecasting volatility with empirical similarity and google trends abstract this paper proposes an empirical similarity approach to forecast weekly volatility by using search engine data as a measure of investors attention to the stock market index our model is assumption free with respect to the underlying process of investors attention and significantly outperforms conventional time series models in an out of sample forecasting framework we find that especially in high volatility market phases prediction accuracy increases together with investor attention the practical implications for risk management are highlighted in a value at risk forecasting exercise where our model produces significantly more accurate forecasts while requiring less capital due to fewer overpredictions

are the non monetary costs of energy efficiency investments large understanding low take up of a free energy efficiency program this paper finds striking evidence that individuals and households bypass opportunities to improve energy efficiency that require zero out of pocket expenditures and are widely believed to be privately beneficial we report results from a large scale randomized controlled trial that significantly reduced barriers to participation in the federal weatherization assistance program wap this program the largest residential energy efficiency program in the country aims to reduce the energy burden of low income americans by installing energy efficiency measures in their homes since the program s inception in 1976 more than 7 million households have received weatherization assistance related work fowlie greenstone and wolfram 2015 finds that participation in this program significantly reduces energy consumption and associated energy expenditures among participating households 1 these sizeable

the economic value of volatility timing using a range based volatility model abstract there is growing interest in utilizing the range data of asset prices to study the role of volatility in financial markets in this paper a new range based volatility model was used to examine the economic value of volatility timing in a mean variance framework we compared its performance with a return based dynamic volatility model in both in sample and out of sample volatility timing strategies for a risk averse investor it was shown that the predictable ability captured by the dynamic volatility models is economically significant and that a range based volatility model performs better than a return based one

labor market estimates of the senior discount for the value of statistical life abstract this article develops the first measures of age industry job risks to examine the age variations in the value of statistical life because of the greater risk vulnerability of older workers they face flatter wage risk gradients than younger workers which we show to be the case empirically accounting for this heterogeneity in hedonic market equilibria leads to estimates of the value of statistical life age relationship that follows an inverted u shape the estimates of the value of statistical life range from 6 4 million for younger workers to a peak of 9 0 million for those aged 35 44 and then a decline to 3 8 million for those aged 55 62 the decline of the estimated value of statistical life with age is consistent with there being some senior discount in the clear skies initiative analysis

a simple approach to arbitrage pricing theory the following sections are included introductionarbitrage pricingdiscussionreferencesdiscussion notes on the arbitrage pricing theorypure arbitrage pricing theoryapproximate arbitrage and the aptapproximate factor modelsthe competitive equilibrium version of the aptconclusionnotereferences this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

an economic evaluation of empirical exchange rate models this paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the short horizon predictive ability of economic fundamentals and forward premiums on monthly exchange rate returns in a framework that allows for volatility timing we implement bayesian methods for estimation and ranking of a set of empirical exchange rate models and construct combined forecasts based on bayesian model averaging more importantly we assess the economic value of the in sample and out of sample forecasting power of the empirical models and find two key results 1 a risk averse investor will pay a high performance fee to switch from a dynamic portfolio strategy based on the random walk model to one that conditions on the forward premium with stochastic volatility innovations and 2 strategies based on combined forecasts yield large economic gains over the random walk benchmark these two results are robust to reasonably high transaction costs

posterior predictive and utility based approaches to testing the arbitrage pricing theory abstract to provide a framework for judging the economic significance of departures from the arbitrage pricing theory we adopt a utility based metric based on optimal portfolio choices this measure is examined using both predictive and posterior analysis our predictive analysis shows very large and economically significant departures from the model restrictions however the high level of parameter uncertainty suggests that we cannot conclusively either affirm or reject the apt our conclusions differ markedly from other studies which employ traditional significance testing procedures and in many instances fail to reject the apt restrictions

a rational explanation for home country bias abstract while modern portfolio theory predicts that investors should diversify across international markets corporate equity is essentially held by domestic investors french and poterba 1991 french k poterba j 1991 investor diversification and international equity markets american economic review 81 222 226 suggest that in order for this bias to be justified investors must hold optimistic expectations about their domestic markets and pessimistic expectations about their foreign markets tesar and werner 1995 tesar l l werner i m 1995 home bias and high turnover journal of international money and finance 14 467 492 find existing explanations for the home equity bias unsatisfactory and conclude that the issue poses a challenge for portfolio theory we develop a model that incorporates both the foregone gains from diversification and the informational constraints of international investing and shows that home equity bias is consistent with rational mean variance portfolio choice specifically we prove that the nature of estimation risk in international markets can be responsible for this phenomenon we show that when the cross market variability in the estimation errors of international markets means far exceeds the cross market variability in the means themselves domestic dedication dominates international diversification an examination of 11 international markets returns over the last 25 years from the perspective of german japanese and us investors provides evidence consistent with this explanation

a general multivariate threshold garch model with dynamic conditional correlations we introduce a new multivariate garch model with multivariate thresholds in conditional correlations and develop a two step estimation procedure that is feasible in large dimensional applications optimal threshold functions are estimated endogenously from the data and the model conditional covariance matrix is ensured to be positive definite we study the empirical performance of our model in two applications using u s stock and bond market data in both applications our model has in terms of statistical and economic significance higher forecasting power than several other multivariate garch models for conditional correlations

the taylor rule and forecast intervals for exchange rates in this paper we examine the meese rogoff puzzle from a different perspective out of sample interval forecasting while most studies in the literature focus on point forecasts we apply semiparametric interval forecasting to a group of exchange rate models forecast intervals for 10 oecd exchange rates are generated and the performance of the empirical exchange rate models are compared with the random walk our contribution is twofold first we find that in general exchange rate models generate tighter forecast intervals than the random walk given that their intervals cover out of sample exchange rate realizations equally well our results suggest a connection between exchange rates and economic fundamentals economic variables contain information useful in forecasting distributions of exchange rates we also find that the benchmark taylor rule model performs better than the monetary ppp and forward premium models and its advantages are more pronounced at longer horizons second the bootstrap inference framework proposed in this paper for forecast interval evaluation can be applied in a broader context such as inflation forecasting

the rationality of usda forecasts under multivariate asymmetric loss a large number of previous studies suggest that many usda forecasts are biased and or inefficient these findings however may be the result of the assumed loss function of usda forecasters we test the rationality of the usda net cash income forecasts and the wasde production and price forecasts between 1988 and 2018 using a flexible multivariate loss function that allows for asymmetric loss and non separable forecast errors our results provide robust evidence that usda forecasters are rational expected loss minimizers yet demonstrate a tendency to place a greater weight on under or overprediction as a result this study provides an alternate interpretation of previous findings of forecast irrationality

a discrete choice model for ordered alternatives a generalization of the multinomial logit mnl model is developed for cases where discrete alternatives are ordered by allowing stochastic correlation among alternatives in close proximity the model belongs to the generalized extreme value class and is therefore consistent with random utility maximization an extension can handle cases where observations have been selected from a truncated choice set a two stage procedure using mnl computer software provides a specification test for mnl against the proposed model two empirical applications are briefly described copyright 1987 by the econometric society

how relevant is volatility forecasting for financial risk management it depends if volatility fluctuates in a forecastable way volatility forecasts are useful for risk management hence the interest in volatility forecastability in the risk management literature volatility forecastability however varies with horizon and different horizons are relevant in different applications moreover existing assessments of volatility forecastability are plagued by the fact that they are joint assessments of volatility forecastability and an assumed model and the results can vary not only with the horizon but also with the assumed model to address this problem we develop a model free procedure for assessing volatility forecastability across horizons perhaps surprisingly we find that volatility forecastability decays quickly with horizon volatility forecastability although clearly of relevance for risk management at the short horizons relevant for say trading desk management may be much less important at longer horizons

multi beta capm or equilibrium apt a reply in their influential empirical paper roll and ross 11 state we think that in many discussions of the capm scholars were actually thinking of the apt and of process 1 the factor model with just a single factor in light of recent developments in the asset pricing literature i think it can now meaningfully be suggested that in many discussions of the apt scholars may have actually been thinking of a multi beta interpretation of the capm indeed much can be said in support of each of these perspectives for a single paradigm is emerging which integrates fundamental aspects of both the capm and the apt broadly speaking the equilibrium capm paradigm emphasizes the role of covariance between asset returns and an endogenous preference based aggregate while the arbitrage apt paradigm focuses on the covariance between asset returns and factors in the return generating process the emerging equilibrium factor paradigm encompasses each of these relations as well as a third covariance between the factors and the equilibrium aggregate my thesis in shanken 17 was that i the arbitrage paradigm has not produced a refutable hypothesis and that ii recognition of the role of the factor aggregate covariance relation appears to be essential if positive economic significance is to be attributed to asset pricing empirical work dybvig and ross d r attempt to resolve the empirical indeterminacy of the arbitrage paradigm by appealing to the condition that residual variance should not be too large i explain in section ii that this condition is inherently ambiguous from an empirical perspective and does not permit the formulation of a precise testable implication the equilibrium factor models which d r discuss do yield testable restrictions on parameters in the return generating process however consistent with my second point above these restrictions involve joint hypotheses that cannot be verified without observing the entire universe of assets thus contrary to their claim considerations similar to those in roll s 10 critique are indeed relevant to the testing of these models this and other similarities between the equilibrium apt and the capm are discussed in section iii i begin by clarifying some basic terminology

estimation and testing of forecast rationality under flexible loss in situations where a sequence of forecasts is observed a common strategy is to examine rationality conditional on a given loss function we examine this from a different perspective supposing that we have a family of loss functions indexed by unknown shape parameters then given the forecasts can we back out the loss function parameters consistent with the forecasts being rational even when we do not observe the underlying forecasting model we establish identification of the parameters of a general class of loss functions that nest popular loss functions as special cases and provide estimation methods and asymptotic distributional results for these parameters this allows us to construct new tests of forecast rationality that allow for asymmetric loss the methods are applied in an empirical analysis of imf and oecd forecasts of budget deficits for the g7 countries we find that allowing for asymmetric loss can significantly change the outcome of empirical tests of forecast rationality