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Introducing shrinkage in heavy-tailed state space models to predict equity excess returns

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  • Florian Huber
  • Gregor Kastner
  • Michael Pfarrhofer

Abstract

We forecast S&P 500 excess returns using a flexible Bayesian econometric state space model with non-Gaussian features at several levels. More precisely, we control for overparameterization via novel global-local shrinkage priors on the state innovation variances as well as the time-invariant part of the state space model. The shrinkage priors are complemented by heavy tailed state innovations that cater for potential large breaks in the latent states. Moreover, we allow for leptokurtic stochastic volatility in the observation equation. The empirical findings indicate that several variants of the proposed approach outperform typical competitors frequently used in the literature, both in terms of point and density forecasts.

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  • Florian Huber & Gregor Kastner & Michael Pfarrhofer, 2018. "Introducing shrinkage in heavy-tailed state space models to predict equity excess returns," Papers 1805.12217, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2019.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1805.12217
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    6. Li, Hanning & Pati, Debdeep, 2017. "Variable selection using shrinkage priors," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 107-119.
    7. Andrew Ang & Geert Bekaert, 2007. "Stock Return Predictability: Is it There?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 651-707.
    8. Koop, Gary & Leon-Gonzalez, Roberto & Strachan, Rodney W., 2009. "On the evolution of the monetary policy transmission mechanism," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 997-1017, April.
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