The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

Business investment is a very important variable for short- and medium-term economic analysis, but it is volatile and difficult to predict. Qualitative business survey data are widely used to provide indicators of economic activity ahead of the publication of official data. Traditional...

In this paper we explore the performance of bridge and factor models in forecasting quarterly aggregates in the very short-term subject to a pre-selection of monthly indicators. Starting from a large information set, we select a subset of targeted predictors using data reduction techniques as in...

We compare the magnitude of local productivity advantages associated with two different spatial concentration patterns in Italy � urban areas and industrial districts. The former have high population density and host a wide range of economic activities, while the latter are marked by a high...

In the past decade changes in oil prices have played a significant role in shaping inflation dynamics in the US and in the euro area, largely through their direct effect on fuels prices, reviving the controversy over whether the prices of petroleum products respond more promptly to positive than...

The size and power properties of several tests of equal Mean Square Prediction Error (MSPE) and of Forecast Encompassing (FE) are evaluated, using Monte Carlo simulations, in the context of dynamic regressions. For nested models, the F-type test of forecast encompassing proposed by Clark and...

While there is a wide consensus in using survey weights when estimating population parameters, it is not clear what to do when using survey data for analytic purposes (i.e. with the objective of making inference about model parameters). In the model-based framework (MB), under the hypothesis...

This paper evaluates the use of risk-neutral probability density functions implied in 3-month interest-rate futures options to assess market perceptions regarding future monetary policy moves options allow the information content implied in simpler derivatives to be extended by providing...

The paper examines various tests for assessing whether a time series model requires a slope component. We first consider the simple t-test on the mean of first differences and show that it achieves high power against the alternative hypothesis of a stochastic nonstationary slope as well as...

The paper examines the evolution of consumer confidence indices in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America since the 1970s, by modelling them in a multivariate framework of common macroeconomic variables for each country. Results...