Bayesian mixture autoregressive model with Student's t innovations

Abstract

This paper introduces a fully Bayesian analysis of mixture autoregressive models with Student t components. With the capacity of capturing the behaviour in the tails of the distribution, the Student t MAR model provides a more flexible modelling framework than its Gaussian counterpart, leading to fitted models with fewer parameters and of easier interpretation. The degrees of freedom are also treated as random variables, and hence are included in the estimation process.