This paper reviews some of the applications that use the vast swathes of information provided by Internet user searches for economic analysis and forecasting. This enormous volume of information, available in real time, can be handled by analysts thanks to statistical tools such as “Google...

This paper proposes a parsimonious approach to test non-linear dependence on the conditional mean and variance of hedge funds with respect to several market factors. My approach introduces non-linear dependence by means of empirically relevant polynomial functions of the factors. For comparison...

The paper deals with the statistical treatment of macroeconomic data for short-run economic analysis, monitoring and control. The main applications are short-term forecasting and unobserved components estimation, including trend and cycle estimation, and, most often, seasonal adjustment. The...

The paper contains some implications for applied econometric research. Two important ones are, first, that invertible models, such as AR or VAR models, cannot in general be used to model seasonally adjusted or detrended data. The second one is that to look at the business cycle in detrended...

In the analysis of time series, it is frequent to classify perturbations as Additive Outliers (AO), Innovative Outliers (IO), Level Shift (LS) outliers or Transitory Change (TC) outliers. In this paper, a new outlier type, the Seasonal Level Shift (SLS), is introduced in order to complete the...

The paper deals with estimation of missing observations in possibly nonstationary ARIMA models. First, the model is assumed known, and the structure of the interpolation filter is analysed. Using the inverse or dual autocorrelation function it is seen how estimation of a missing observation is...

This paper investigates the identification and dating of the European business cycle, using different methods. We concentrate on methods and statistical series that provides timely and accurate information about the contemporaneous state of the economy in order to provide the reader with a...

During the last crisis, developed economies’ sovereign Credit Default Swap (hereafter CDS) premia have gained in importance as a tool for approximating credit risk. In this paper, we fit a dynamic factor model to decompose the sovereign CDS spreads of ten OECD economies into three components:...

The evolution of Regional and Local governments’ spending in Spain is currently under close scrutiny by national and international investors and analysts, international organizations and rating agencies. Indeed, some 50% of general government spending and some 70% of public employment are...

El Modelo Trimestral del Banco de España (MTBE) constituye una herramienta fundamental para la elaboración de proyecciones a medio plazo de la economía española y para la cuantificación de los posibles efectos de distintas medidas de política económica o de perturbaciones de diversa...