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Improving Bayesian VAR density forecasts through autoregressive Wishart Stochastic Volatility

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  • Karapanagiotidis, Paul

Abstract

Dramatic changes in macroeconomic time series volatility pose a challenge to contemporary vector autoregressive (VAR) forecasting models. Traditionally, the conditional volatility of such models had been assumed constant over time or allowed for breaks across long time periods. More recent work, however, has improved forecasts by allowing the conditional volatility to be completely time variant by specifying the VAR innovation variance as a distinct discrete time process. For example, Clark (2011) specifies the volatility process as an independent log random walk for each time series in the VAR. Unfortunately, there is no empirical reason to believe that the VAR innovation volatility process of macroeconomic growth series follow log random walks, nor that the volatility of each series is independent of the others. This suggests that a more robust specification on the volatility process—one that both accounts for co-persistence in conditional volatility across time series and exhibits mean reverting behaviour—should improve density forecasts, especially over the long run forecasting horizon. In this respect, I employ a latent Inverse-Wishart autoregressive stochastic volatility specification on the conditional variance equation of a Bayesian VAR, with U.S. macroeconomic time series data, in evaluating Bayesian forecast efficiency against a competing log random walk specification by Clark (2011).

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 38885.

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Date of creation: 10 Mar 2012
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Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:38885

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Keywords: InverseWishart distribution; stochastic volatility; predictive likelihoods; MCMC; macroeconomic time series; density forecasts; vector autoregression; steady state priors; Bayesian econometrics;

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  1. FrancisX. Diebold & Kamil Yilmaz, 2009. "Measuring Financial Asset Return and Volatility Spillovers, with Application to Global Equity Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 158-171, 01.
  2. Anne Sofie Jore & James Mitchell & Shaun P. Vahey, 2010. "Combining forecast densities from VARs with uncertain instabilities," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 621-634.
  3. Engle, Robert F. & Kroner, Kenneth F., 1995. "Multivariate Simultaneous Generalized ARCH," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(01), pages 122-150, February.
  4. Manabu Asai & Michael McAleer & Jun Yu, 2006. "Multivariate Stochastic Volatility," Microeconomics Working Papers 22058, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
  5. Todd E. Clark & Michael McCracken, 1999. "Tests of Equal Forecast Accuracy and Encompassing for Nested Models," Computing in Economics and Finance 1999 1241, Society for Computational Economics.
  6. Geweke, John & Amisano, Gianni, 2010. "Comparing and evaluating Bayesian predictive distributions of asset returns," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 216-230, April.
  7. Philipov, Alexander & Glickman, Mark E., 2006. "Multivariate Stochastic Volatility via Wishart Processes," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 24, pages 313-328, July.
  8. Clements,Michael & Hendry,David, 1998. "Forecasting Economic Time Series," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521632423.
  9. Joan Jasiak & R. Sufana & C. Gourieroux, 2005. "The Wishart Autoregressive Process of Multivariate Stochastic Volatility," Working Papers 2005_2, York University, Department of Economics.
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Cited by:
  1. Todd E. Clark & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2012. "The macroeconomic forecasting performance of autoregressive models with alternative specifications of time-varying volatility," Working Paper 2012/09, Norges Bank.

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