  The estimation of dependencies between multiple variables is a central
problem in the analysis of financial time series. A common approach is to
express these dependencies in terms of a copula function. Typically the copula
function is assumed to be constant but this may be inaccurate when there are
covariates that could have a large influence on the dependence structure of the
data. To account for this, a Bayesian framework for the estimation of
conditional copulas is proposed. In this framework the parameters of a copula
are non-linearly related to some arbitrary conditioning variables. We evaluate
the ability of our method to predict time-varying dependencies on several
equities and currencies and observe consistent performance gains compared to
static copula models and other time-varying copula methods.
