Keynote Lecture: Dick van Dijk

Chair: Sune Karlsson

Prof. Dick van Dijk (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Title:  Pooling Dynamic Conditional Correlation Models

Abstract: The Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model by Engle (2002) has become an extremely popular tool for modeling the time-varying dependence of asset returns. However, applications to large cross-sections have been found to be problematic, due to the curse of dimensionality. We propose a novel DCC model with Conditional LInear Pooling (CLIP-DCC) which endogenously determines an optimal degree of commonality in the correlation innovations, allowing a part of the update to be of reduced dimension. In con- trast to existing approaches such as the Dynamic EquiCOrrelation (DECO) model, the CLIP-DCC model does not restrict long-run behavior, thereby naturally complementing target correlation matrix shrinkage approaches. Empirical findings suggest substantial benefits for a minimum-variance investor in real-time. Combining the CLIP-DCC model with target shrinkage yields the largest improvements, confirming that they address distinct parts of uncertainty of the conditional correlation matrix.