Heavy Tails and Predictive Ability Testing (opens in new tab)

We study the asymptotic behaviour of widely used tests for evaluating and comparing predictive accuracy when forecast errors exhibit heavy tails. In particular, when loss differentials have infinite variance, the Diebold-Mariano test statistic converges to a nonstandard limit involving non-Gaussian stable random variables. As a consequence, conventional critical values can yield severely distorted inference: a nominal 5$\%$ test may reject a tru...