Two Relevant Forecasting Problems for Practitioners in Finance: Equity Risk Premium and Non-Performing Loans

2021

The thesis aims to substantiate whether macroeconomic factors indicators are relevant to predict both in-sample and out-of-sample assets' future performance focusing on two well-studied themes in financial economics and banking: First, the ability to predict the equity risk premium, and second, the macroeconomic determinants of non-performing loans (NPL) rates. The dissertation is divided in three chapters. Chapter 1, entitled "Forecasting the equity risk premium in the European Monetary Union", investigates the capacity of multiple economic and technical variables to predict the Euro area equity risk premium. The chapter examines the performance of several variables that could be good pred…