A Bayesian approach to term structure modeling using heavy‐tailed distributions |
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Authors: | Carlos Antonio Abanto‐Valle Victor H Lachos Pulak Ghosh |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Statistics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, , Caixa Postal 68530, CEP: 21945‐970, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;2. Department of Statistics, Campinas State University, , Campinas, Brazil;3. Department of Quantitative Methods and Information Systems, Indian Institute of Management, , Bangalore, India |
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Abstract: | In this paper, we introduce a robust extension of the three‐factor model of Diebold and Li (J. Econometrics, 130: 337–364, 2006) using the class of symmetric scale mixtures of normal distributions. Specific distributions examined include the multivariate normal, Student‐t, slash, and variance gamma distributions. In the presence of non‐normality in the data, these distributions provide an appealing robust alternative to the routine use of the normal distribution. Using a Bayesian paradigm, we developed an efficient MCMC algorithm for parameter estimation. Moreover, the mixing parameters obtained as a by‐product of the scale mixture representation can be used to identify outliers. Our results reveal that the Diebold–Li models based on the Student‐t and slash distributions provide significant improvement in in‐sample fit and out‐of‐sample forecast to the US yield data than the usual normal‐based model. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
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Keywords: | interest rates MCMC scale mixture of normal distributions state space models term structure |
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