A term weighting scheme measures the importance of a term in a collection. A document ranking model uses these term weights to find the rank or score of a document in a collection. We present a series of cluster-based term weighting and document ranking models based on the TF-IDF and Okapi BM25 models. These term weighting and document ranking models update the inter-cluster and intra-cluster frequency components based on the generated clusters. These inter-cluster and intra-cluster frequency components are used for weighting the importance of a term in addition to the term and document frequency components. In this thesis, we will show how these models outperform the TF-IDF and Okapi BM25 models in document clustering and ranking.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de proposer des schémas de pondérations alternatives visant à prendre en compte le risque dans la construction d’indices obligataires. Nous partons du constat suivant : les indices obligataires qui existent sur le marché sont pondérés en fonction de la capitalisation des émetteurs. L’implication n’est pas négligeable, dans la mesure où utiliser cette approche implique de sur-pondérer les entités les plus endettées. Sur cette base, nous proposons dans le premier chapitre de pondérer les entreprises au sein de l’indice en fonction de leur solvabilité. Dans le deuxième chapitre, toujours sur l’univers des obligations d’entreprises, nous appliquons le principe du risque en parité. Plus précisément, les secteurs sont pondérés de façon inversement proportionnelle à une mesure du risque de crédit innovante : la Duration Times Spread. Enfin, le dernier chapitre s’intéresse à l’application de cette même technique du risque en parité, mais cette fois-ci à l’univers des obligations souveraines. Nous nous engageons dans la modélisation d’une structure de taux à terme, permettant de mesurer le risque de taux d’intérêt dans un contexte global. Plus généralement, nous démontrons que ces pondérations alternatives, qui intègrent une notion de risque (crédit ou taux) et s’éloignent ainsi du pur aspect “niveau d’endettement”, fournissent une nouvelle grille de lecture pour la compréhension de la dynamique des marchés obligataires ainsi que des améliorations significatives dans le profil rendement-risque. / In this thesis, we are keen to explore alternative weighting schemes that account for risk in the fixed-income indexing market. We start with the following observation: bond indexes that exist on the market are generally cap-weighted. The implication is not trivial: when holding such index, an investor is exposed to the most indebted issuers. From that standpoint, in the first chapter we make the proposal to consider an issuer’s creditworthiness as a weighting metric. Then in the second chapter, still working on the corporate bond market, we decide to turn to risk-parity indexing. More precisely, sectors are weighted inversely proportional to an innovative credit risk measure. Finally, the third chapter is devoted to the transposition of such risk-based philosophy to the sovereign bond universe. Particularly, we examine term structure modeling to appraise interest rate risk in a global framework. On a more general note, we show that these alternative indexing schemes - that do not emanate from pure indebtedness, but that are rather based on more sensible definitions of risk (credit or interest rate) provide a new reading grid for understanding bond market’s dynamics as well as appealing improvements in the indexes’ risk-return profile.

When measuring market risk, credit institutions and Alternative Investment Fund Managers may deviate from equally weighting historical data in their Value-at-Risk calculation and instead use an exponential time series weighting. The use of expo-nential weighting in the Value-at-Risk calculation is very popular because it takes into account changes in market volatility (immediately) and can therefore quickly adapt to VaR. In less volatile market phases, this leads to a reduction in VaR and thus to lower own funds requirements for credit institutions. However, in the ex-ponential weighting a high volatility in the past is quickly forgotten and the VaR can be underestimated when using exponential weighting and the VaR may be un-derestimated. To prevent this, credit institutions or Alternative Investment Fund Managers are not completely free to choose a weighting (decay) factor. This article describes the legal requirements and deals with the calculation of the permissible weighting factor. As an example we use the exchange rate between Euro and Polish zloty to estimate the Value-at-Risk. We show the calculation of the weighting factor with two different approaches. This article also discusses exceptions to the general legal requirements.

The conduct of effective economic policy faces a multiplicity of macroeconomic challenges, which requires a wide scope of theoretical and empirical analyses. With a focus on the European Union, this doctoral dissertation consists of two parts which make empirical and methodological contributions to the literature on forecasting real economic activity and on the analysis of business cycles in a boom-bust framework in the light of the EMU enlargement. In the first part, we tackle the problem of publication lags and analyse the role of the information flow in computing short-term forecasts up to one quarter ahead for the euro area GDP and its main components. A huge dataset of monthly indicators is used to estimate simple bridge equations. The individual forecasts are then pooled, using different weighting schemes. To take into consideration the release calendar of each indicator, six forecasts are compiled successively during the quarter. We find that the sequencing of information determines the weight allocated to each block of indicators, especially when the first month of hard data becomes available. This conclusion extends the findings of the recent literature. Moreover, when combining forecasts, two weighting schemes are found to outperform the equal weighting scheme in almost all cases. In the second part, we focus on the potential accession of the new EU Member States in Central and Eastern Europe to the euro area. In contrast to the discussion of Optimum Currency Areas, we follow a non-standard approach for the discussion on abandonment of national currencies the boom-bust theory. We analyse whether evidence for boom-bust cycles is given and draw conclusions whether these countries should join the EMU in the near future. Using a broad range of data sets and empirical methods we document credit market imperfections, comprising asymmetric financing opportunities across sectors, excess foreign currency liabilities and contract enforceability problems both at macro and micro level. Furthermore, we depart from the standard analysis of comovements of business cycles among countries and rather consider long-run and short-run comovements across sectors. While the results differ across countries, we find evidence for credit market imperfections in Central and Eastern Europe and different sectoral reactions to shocks. This gives favour for the assessment of the potential euro accession using this supplementary, non-standard approach.