This paper considers factor estimation from heterogenous data, where some of the variables are noisy and only weakly informative for the factors. To identify the irrelevant variables, we search for zero rows in the loadings matrix of the factor model. To sharply separate these irrelevant...

The decline of most world commodity prices came to an end in recent months. The aggregate dollar price level was 15 per cent lower in the first quarter of 1999 compared to a year previously, and since autumn 1997 it even decreased by about 30 per cent. Oil prices fell particularly sharply, but...

Forecasts of the quarterly real price of oil are routinely used by international organizations and central banks worldwide in assessing the global and domestic economic outlook, yet little is known about how best to generate such forecasts. Our analysis breaks new ground in several dimensions....

Modern econometrics requires implementation of highly specialized software. In contrast to mathematical arguments used in implementing new econometric techniques the corresponding software algorithms require specific platforms. The specialization of hardware and software, in fact, seriously...

The cross-country growth literature commonly uses aggregate economy datasets such as the Penn World Table (PWT) to estimate homogeneous production function or convergence regression models. Against the background of a dual economy framework this paper investigates the potential bias arising when...

This is the first paper that econometrically estimates the impact of rising Bioenergy production on global CO2 emissions. We apply a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) approach to time series from 1961 to 2009 with annual observation for the world biofuel production and global CO2...