Bøger i The Econometric and Tinbergen Institutes Lectures serien

How should planners use the available evidence to choose treatments? This book addresses key aspects of this question, exploring and partially resolving pervasive problems of identification and statistical inference that arise when studying treatment response and making treatment choices.

This book reviews and develops Bayesian non-parametric and semi-parametric methods for applications in microeconometrics and quantitative marketing. Most econometric models used in microeconomics and marketing applications involve arbitrary distributional assumptions. As more data becomes available, a natural desire to provide methods that relax these assumptions arises. Peter Rossi advocates a Bayesian approach in which specific distributional assumptions are replaced with more flexible distributions based on mixtures of normals. The Bayesian approach can use either a large but fixed number of normal components in the mixture or an infinite number bounded only by the sample size. By using flexible distributional approximations instead of fixed parametric models, the Bayesian approach can reap the advantages of an efficient method that models all of the structure in the data while retaining desirable smoothing properties. Non-Bayesian non-parametric methods often require additional ad hoc rules to avoid "e;overfitting,"e; in which resulting density approximates are nonsmooth. With proper priors, the Bayesian approach largely avoids overfitting, while retaining flexibility. This book provides methods for assessing informative priors that require only simple data normalizations. The book also applies the mixture of the normals approximation method to a number of important models in microeconometrics and marketing, including the non-parametric and semi-parametric regression models, instrumental variables problems, and models of heterogeneity. In addition, the author has written a free online software package in R, "e;bayesm,"e; which implements all of the non-parametric models discussed in the book.

The global financial crisis highlighted the impact on macroeconomic outcomes of recurrent events like business and financial cycles, highs and lows in volatility, and crashes and recessions. At the most basic level, such recurrent events can be summarized using binary indicators showing if the event will occur or not. These indicators are constructed either directly from data or indirectly through models. Because they are constructed, they have different properties than those arising in microeconometrics, and how one is to use them depends a lot on the method of construction.This book presents the econometric methods necessary for the successful modeling of recurrent events, providing valuable insights for policymakers, empirical researchers, and theorists. It explains why it is inherently difficult to forecast the onset of a recession in a way that provides useful guidance for active stabilization policy, with the consequence that policymakers should place more emphasis on making the economy robust to recessions. The book offers a range of econometric tools and techniques that researchers can use to measure recurrent events, summarize their properties, and evaluate how effectively economic and statistical models capture them. These methods also offer insights for developing models that are consistent with observed financial and real cycles.This book is an essential resource for students, academics, and researchers at central banks and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models have become one of the workhorses of modern macroeconomics and are extensively used for academic research as well as forecasting and policy analysis at central banks. This book introduces readers to state-of-the-art computational techniques used in the Bayesian analysis of DSGE models. The book covers Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques for linearized DSGE models, novel sequential Monte Carlo methods that can be used for parameter inference, and the estimation of nonlinear DSGE models based on particle filter approximations of the likelihood function. The theoretical foundations of the algorithms are discussed in depth, and detailed empirical applications and numerical illustrations are provided. The book also gives invaluable advice on how to tailor these algorithms to specific applications and assess the accuracy and reliability of the computations.Bayesian Estimation of DSGE Models is essential reading for graduate students, academic researchers, and practitioners at policy institutions.

Understanding the dynamic evolution of the yield curve is critical to many financial tasks, including pricing financial assets and their derivatives, managing financial risk, allocating portfolios, structuring fiscal debt, conducting monetary policy, and valuing capital goods. Unfortunately, most yield curve models tend to be theoretically rigorous but empirically disappointing, or empirically successful but theoretically lacking. In this book, Francis Diebold and Glenn Rudebusch propose two extensions of the classic yield curve model of Nelson and Siegel that are both theoretically rigorous and empirically successful. The first extension is the dynamic Nelson-Siegel model (DNS), while the second takes this dynamic version and makes it arbitrage-free (AFNS). Diebold and Rudebusch show how these two models are just slightly different implementations of a single unified approach to dynamic yield curve modeling and forecasting. They emphasize both descriptive and efficient-markets aspects, they pay special attention to the links between the yield curve and macroeconomic fundamentals, and they show why DNS and AFNS are likely to remain of lasting appeal even as alternative arbitrage-free models are developed. Based on the Econometric and Tinbergen Institutes Lectures, Yield Curve Modeling and Forecasting contains essential tools with enhanced utility for academics, central banks, governments, and industry.

Financial markets respond to information virtually instantaneously. Each new piece of information influences the prices of assets and their correlations with each other, and as the system rapidly changes, so too do correlation forecasts. This fast-evolving environment presents econometricians with the challenge of forecasting dynamic correlations, which are essential inputs to risk measurement, portfolio allocation, derivative pricing, and many other critical financial activities. In Anticipating Correlations, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Engle introduces an important new method for estimating correlations for large systems of assets: Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC). Engle demonstrates the role of correlations in financial decision making, and addresses the economic underpinnings and theoretical properties of correlations and their relation to other measures of dependence. He compares DCC with other correlation estimators such as historical correlation, exponential smoothing, and multivariate GARCH, and he presents a range of important applications of DCC. Engle presents the asymmetric model and illustrates it using a multicountry equity and bond return model. He introduces the new FACTOR DCC model that blends factor models with the DCC to produce a model with the best features of both, and illustrates it using an array of U.S. large-cap equities. Engle shows how overinvestment in collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, lies at the heart of the subprime mortgage crisis--and how the correlation models in this book could have foreseen the risks. A technical chapter of econometric results also is included. Based on the Econometric and Tinbergen Institutes Lectures, Anticipating Correlations puts powerful new forecasting tools into the hands of researchers, financial analysts, risk managers, derivative quants, and graduate students.

Econometric models are widely used in the creation and evaluation of economic policy in the public and private sectors. But these models are useful only if they adequately account for the phenomena in question, and they can be quite misleading if they do not. In response, econometricians have developed tests and other checks for model adequacy. All of these methods, however, take as given the specification of the model to be tested. In this book, John Geweke addresses the critical earlier stage of model development, the point at which potential models are inherently incomplete. Summarizing and extending recent advances in Bayesian econometrics, Geweke shows how simple modern simulation methods can complement the creative process of model formulation. These methods, which are accessible to economics PhD students as well as to practicing applied econometricians, streamline the processes of model development and specification checking. Complete with illustrations from a wide variety of applications, this is an important contribution to econometrics that will interest economists and PhD students alike.