Fast Empirical Scenarios

We seek to extract a small number of representative scenarios from large and high-dimensional panel data that are consistent with sample moments. Among two novel algorithms, the first identifies scenarios that have not been observed before, and comes with a scenario-based representation of covariance matrices. The second proposal picks important data points from states of the world that have already realized, and are consistent with higher-order sample moment information. Both algorithms are efficient to compute, and lend themselves to consistent scenario-based modeling and high-dimensional numerical integration. Extensive numerical benchmarking studies and an application in portfolio optimization favor the proposed algorithms.