This paper analyses revisions of Swiss current account data, taking into account the actual data revision process and the implied types of revisions. In addition we investigate whether the first release of current account data can be improved upon by the use of survey results as gathered by the KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich. An answer in the affirmative indicates that it is possible ...

This article investigates the effects and transmission channels of shocks between two asymmetric neighboring countries. In particular, we investigate Austria and Germany which are highly integrated due to their common language and common membership of the European Monetary Union. Generalized impulse response functions reveal that there are large and significant effects of shocks to the German e...

We propose a Bayesian procedure for exploiting small, possibly long-lag linear predictability in the innovations of a finite order autoregression. We model the innovations as having a log-spectral density that is a continuous mean-zero Gaussian process of order 1/ √ T . This local embedding makes the problem asymptotically a normal-normal Bayes problem, resulting in closed-form solutions for th...

We examine the roles of idiosyncratic and systemic funding liquidity risks in bank failures. We estimate a discrete-time hazard model of bank failure using data of U.S. commercial banks between 1985 and 2004, and examine its out-of-sample forecasting performance between 2005 and 2011. The out-of-sample performance comparison shows this model outperforms typical bank failure prediction models. W...

A semiparametric extension of the GJR model (Glosten et al., 1993. Journal of Finance 48, 1779–1801) is proposed for the volatility of foreign exchange returns. Under reasonable assumptions, asymptotic normal distributions are established for the estimators of the model, corroborated by simulation results. When applied to the Deutsche Mark/US Dollar and the Deutsche Mark/British Pound daily ret...

This paper examines the asymptotic and finite-sample properties of tests of equal forecast accuracy applied to direct, multi–step predictions from both non-nested and nested linear regression models. In contrast to earlier work in the literature, our asymptotics take account of the real-time, revised nature of the data. Monte Carlo simulations indicate that our asymptotic approximations yield r...

This paper considers the problems facing decision makers using econometric models in real time. It identifies the key stages involved and highlights the role of automated systems in reducing the effect of data snooping. It sets out many choices that researchers face in construction of automated systems and discusses some of the possible ways advanced in the literature for dealing with them. The...