Machine Learning and Causality: The Impact of Financial Crises on Growth


Book Description

Machine learning tools are well known for their success in prediction. But prediction is not causation, and causal discovery is at the core of most questions concerning economic policy. Recently, however, the literature has focused more on issues of causality. This paper gently introduces some leading work in this area, using a concrete example—assessing the impact of a hypothetical banking crisis on a country’s growth. By enabling consideration of a rich set of potential nonlinearities, and by allowing individually-tailored policy assessments, machine learning can provide an invaluable complement to the skill set of economists within the Fund and beyond.




The Feasibility of Predicting Financial Crises using Machine Learning


Book Description

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2024 in the subject Computer Science - Commercial Information Technology, grade: 1.0, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, language: English, abstract: In a world characterized by increasingly complex financial markets, the prediction of financial crises is a constant challenge. This bachelor thesis investigates the use of machine learning, in particular regression algorithms, to analyze and predict financial crises based on macroeconomic data. By building six different regression models and optimizing them using cross-validation and GridSearch, the feasibility of using these technologies for accurate predictions is discussed. Although traditional models show limited effectiveness, the integration of machine learning, especially kNN algorithms, reveals significant potential for improving prediction accuracy. The paper highlights the importance of classification algorithms and provides crucial insights for application in real-world scenarios to provide valuable tools for policy and business decision makers.




Predicting Fiscal Crises: A Machine Learning Approach


Book Description

In this paper I assess the ability of econometric and machine learning techniques to predict fiscal crises out of sample. I show that the econometric approaches used in many policy applications cannot outperform a simple heuristic rule of thumb. Machine learning techniques (elastic net, random forest, gradient boosted trees) deliver significant improvements in accuracy. Performance of machine learning techniques improves further, particularly for developing countries, when I expand the set of potential predictors and make use of algorithmic selection techniques instead of relying on a small set of variables deemed important by the literature. There is considerable agreement across learning algorithms in the set of selected predictors: Results confirm the importance of external sector stock and flow variables found in the literature but also point to demographics and the quality of governance as important predictors of fiscal crises. Fiscal variables appear to have less predictive value, and public debt matters only to the extent that it is owed to external creditors.




Data Science for Economics and Finance


Book Description

This open access book covers the use of data science, including advanced machine learning, big data analytics, Semantic Web technologies, natural language processing, social media analysis, time series analysis, among others, for applications in economics and finance. In addition, it shows some successful applications of advanced data science solutions used to extract new knowledge from data in order to improve economic forecasting models. The book starts with an introduction on the use of data science technologies in economics and finance and is followed by thirteen chapters showing success stories of the application of specific data science methodologies, touching on particular topics related to novel big data sources and technologies for economic analysis (e.g. social media and news); big data models leveraging on supervised/unsupervised (deep) machine learning; natural language processing to build economic and financial indicators; and forecasting and nowcasting of economic variables through time series analysis. This book is relevant to all stakeholders involved in digital and data-intensive research in economics and finance, helping them to understand the main opportunities and challenges, become familiar with the latest methodological findings, and learn how to use and evaluate the performances of novel tools and frameworks. It primarily targets data scientists and business analysts exploiting data science technologies, and it will also be a useful resource to research students in disciplines and courses related to these topics. Overall, readers will learn modern and effective data science solutions to create tangible innovations for economic and financial applications.




Prediction, Learning, and Games


Book Description

This important text and reference for researchers and students in machine learning, game theory, statistics and information theory offers a comprehensive treatment of the problem of predicting individual sequences. Unlike standard statistical approaches to forecasting, prediction of individual sequences does not impose any probabilistic assumption on the data-generating mechanism. Yet, prediction algorithms can be constructed that work well for all possible sequences, in the sense that their performance is always nearly as good as the best forecasting strategy in a given reference class. The central theme is the model of prediction using expert advice, a general framework within which many related problems can be cast and discussed. Repeated game playing, adaptive data compression, sequential investment in the stock market, sequential pattern analysis, and several other problems are viewed as instances of the experts' framework and analyzed from a common nonstochastic standpoint that often reveals new and intriguing connections.




Understanding and Predicting Systemic Corporate Distress: A Machine-Learning Approach


Book Description

In this paper, we study systemic non-financial corporate sector distress using firm-level probabilities of default (PD), covering 55 economies, and spanning the last three decades. Systemic corporate distress is identified by elevated PDs across a large portion of the firms in an economy. A machine-learning based early warning system is constructed to predict the onset of distress in one year’s time. Our results show that credit expansion, monetary policy tightening, overvalued stock prices, and debt-linked balance-sheet weaknesses predict corporate distress. We also find that systemic corporate distress events are associated with contractions in GDP and credit growth in advanced and emerging markets at different degrees and milder than financial crises.




Answering the Queen


Book Description

Financial crises cause economic, social and political havoc. Macroprudential policies are gaining traction but are still severely under-researched compared to monetary and "fiscal policy. We use the general framework of sequential predictions, also called online machine learning, to forecast crises out-of-sample. Our methodology is based on model aggregation and is “meta-statistical”, since we can incorporate any predictive model of crises in our analysis and test its ability to add information, without making any assumption on the data generating process. We predict systemic "financial crises twelve quarters ahead out-of-sample with high signal-to-noise ratio. Our approach guarantees that picking certain time dependent sets of weights will be asymptotically similar for out-of-sample forecasts to the best ex post combination of models; it also guarantees that we outperform any individual forecasting model asymptotically. We analyse which models provide the most information for our predictions at each point in time and for each country, allowing us to gain some insights into economic mechanisms underlying the building of risk in economies.




Empirical Asset Pricing


Book Description

An introduction to the theory and methods of empirical asset pricing, integrating classical foundations with recent developments. This book offers a comprehensive advanced introduction to asset pricing, the study of models for the prices and returns of various securities. The focus is empirical, emphasizing how the models relate to the data. The book offers a uniquely integrated treatment, combining classical foundations with more recent developments in the literature and relating some of the material to applications in investment management. It covers the theory of empirical asset pricing, the main empirical methods, and a range of applied topics. The book introduces the theory of empirical asset pricing through three main paradigms: mean variance analysis, stochastic discount factors, and beta pricing models. It describes empirical methods, beginning with the generalized method of moments (GMM) and viewing other methods as special cases of GMM; offers a comprehensive review of fund performance evaluation; and presents selected applied topics, including a substantial chapter on predictability in asset markets that covers predicting the level of returns, volatility and higher moments, and predicting cross-sectional differences in returns. Other chapters cover production-based asset pricing, long-run risk models, the Campbell-Shiller approximation, the debate on covariance versus characteristics, and the relation of volatility to the cross-section of stock returns. An extensive reference section captures the current state of the field. The book is intended for use by graduate students in finance and economics; it can also serve as a reference for professionals.




Artificial Intelligence in Asset Management


Book Description

Artificial intelligence (AI) has grown in presence in asset management and has revolutionized the sector in many ways. It has improved portfolio management, trading, and risk management practices by increasing efficiency, accuracy, and compliance. In particular, AI techniques help construct portfolios based on more accurate risk and return forecasts and more complex constraints. Trading algorithms use AI to devise novel trading signals and execute trades with lower transaction costs. AI also improves risk modeling and forecasting by generating insights from new data sources. Finally, robo-advisors owe a large part of their success to AI techniques. Yet the use of AI can also create new risks and challenges, such as those resulting from model opacity, complexity, and reliance on data integrity.