It is often suggested that through a judicious choice of predictors that track business cycles and market sentiment, simple vector autoregressive (VAR) models could produce optimal strategic portfolio allocations that hedge against the bull and bear dynamics typical of financial markets. However, a distinct literature exists that shows that nonlinear econometric frameworks, such as Markov switching (MS), are also natural tools to compute optimal portfolios in the presence of stochastic good and bad market states. In this paper we examine whether simple VARs can produce portfolio rules similar to those obtained under MS, by studying the effects of expanding both the order of the VAR and the number/selection of predictor variables included. In a typical stock–bond strategic asset allocation problem, we compute the out-of-sample certainty equivalent returns for a wide range of VARs and compare these measures of performance with those typical of nonlinear models for a long-horizon investor with constant relative risk aversion. We conclude that most VARs cannot produce portfolio rules, hedging demands, or (net of transaction costs) out-of-sample performances that approximate those obtained from equally simple nonlinear frameworks. We also compute the improvement in realized performance that may be achieved adopting more complex MS models and report this may be substantial in the case of regime switching ARCH.

We study the effects of a conventional monetary expansion, quantitative easing, and the maturity extension program on corporate bond yields using impulse response functions obtained from flexible models with regimes. Using a three-state Markov switching model with time-homogeneous vector autoregressive (VAR) coefficients that emerges from a systematic model specification search, we find that unconventional policies may have been generally expected to decrease both corporate yields and spreads. However, even though the sign of the responses is the one desired by policymakers, the size of the estimated effects depends on the assumptions regarding the decline in long-term Treasury yields caused by unconventional policies, on which considerable uncertainty remains. Further tests based on yield spreads and a variable that measures inflation expectations show that, in the crisis regime, unconventional monetary policies do not produce any perverse effects on expected inflation. These results prove robust to adopting a framework that allows VAR coefficients to break, to imposing coefficient restrictions that increase parsimony, and to a range of different ordering schemes that identify shocks in alternative ways.