This paper employs non-parametric specification tests developed in Hong and Li (2005) to evaluate several one-factor reduced-form credit risk models for actual default intensities. Using estimates for actual default probabilities provided by Moody’s KMV from 1994 to 2005 for 106 U.S. firms in seven industry groups, we strongly reject popular univariate affine model specifications. As a good com...

In economic applications it is often the case that the variate of interest is nonnegative and its distribution has a mass-point at zero. Many regression strategies have been proposed to deal with data of this type but, although there has been a long debate in the literature on the appropriateness of different models, formal statistical tests to choose between the competing specifications are no...

This note investigates impacts of multivariate generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) errors on hypothesis testing for cointegrating vectors. The study reviews a cointegrated vector autoregressive model incorporating multivariate GARCH innovations and a regularity condition required for valid asymptotic inferences. Monte Carlo experiments are then conducted on a test ...

A Flexible Test for Present Bias and Time Preferences Using Land-Lease Contracts When agents have present bias, they discount more between now and the next period than between period t (> 1) and t + 1. How fast the future discount rate (evaluated today) decays is an empirical question. We show that the discount function can be non-parametrically identified with contracts that specify payments t...

We develop a new consistent conditional moment test of functional form based on nuisance parameter indexed sample moments. We reduce the nuisance parameter space to known countable sets, provide a new vantage into why existing parametric moment condition tests work, and uncover a new class of revealing weights. These results are exploited to construct a weighted average conditional moment test,...

This chapter provides an overview of pseudo-out-of-sample tests of unconditional predictive ability. We begin by providing an overview of the literature, including both empirical applications and theoretical contributions. We then delineate two distinct methodologies for conducting inference: one based on the analytics in West (1996) and the other based on those in Giacomini and White (2006). T...

This paper examines jump dynamic patterns in three Chinese medical stocks. It also compares the Value-at-Risk (VaR) forecasting performance of a newly proposed realized volatility model allowing for jumps with that of two commonly used realized volatility models, which do not account for jumps. Using the Heterogeneous Autoregressive Realized Volatility model that allows for jumps (HAR-CJN), we ...

A practice that has become widespread is that of comparing forecasts of financial return variability obtained from discrete time models against high frequency estimates based on continuous time theory. In explanatory financial return variability modelling this raises several methodological and practical issues, which suggests an alternative framework is needed. The contribution of this study is...

We develop a specification test of predictive densities based on that the generalized residuals of correctly specified predictive density models are i.i.d. uniform. The proposed sequential test examines the hypotheses of serial independence and uniformity in two stages, wherein the first stage test of serial independence is robust to violation of uniformity. The approach of data driven smooth t...

This paper explores a theory of business cycles in which recessions and booms arise due to difficulties encountered by agents in properly forecasting the economy’s future needs in terms of capital. The idea has a long history in the macroeconomic literature, as reflected by the work of Pigou (Industrial Fluctuation, MacMillan, London, 1926). The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we ...