Maravall and del Río (2001), analized the time aggregation properties of the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter, which decomposes a time series into trend and cycle, for the case of annual, quarterly, and monthly data, and showed that aggregation of the disaggregate component cannot be obtained as...

The sovereign debt crisis in the euro area has raised interest in early warning indicators, aimed at signalling the build-up of fiscal stress in advance and helping prevent crises by means of a timely counteraction of fiscal and macroeconomic policies. This paper presents possible improvements...

This paper has been prepared to mark the tenth anniversary of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). It seeks to give an overview of the Spanish economy’s experience in this new institutional setting. It should be viewed as the result of a joint effort by a sizeable group of researchers from the...

Since the Latin American debt crisis of the early 80s, country risk analysis has accounted for a significant part of the work of research and risk management departments of banks, insurance companies, rating agencies, financial market regulators, and multinational companies. Country risk is a...

The Chinese banking system, characterized by massive government intervention, poor asset quality and low capitalization, has started a reform process based on three main pillars: (i) bank restructuring, through the cleaning-up of non-performing loans and public capital injections, particularly...

We provide key stylised facts on fiscal policy developments in Spain over the past three decades using quarterly data (1986Q1-2012Q2). First, we compute stylised facts on the cyclical properties of fiscal policies over that period. Next, we report updated evidence on the macroeconomic effects of...

This paper applies the programs TRAMO and SEATS to seasonal adjustment of the monthly Consumer Price Index Swiss series. It is shown how the results of the purely automatic procedure can be improved with two simple modifications: one that emerges from the TRAMO-SEATS diagnostics, and another...

Monetary union in Europe raises the problem of converting into euros nominal historical series calculated in the respective national currencies. The aim of this paper is to evaluate alternative conversion procedures, including use of the rates fixed at the start of Stage Three between the...

This paper assesses financial sector development in Latin America, both in the banking system and in the capital markets. After a brief review of the explanatory factors and the definitions of financial development found in the literature, Latin American countries are classified in groups of...

In this paper we develop a comprehensive short-term fiscal forecasting system of use for the real-time monitoring of the Spanish government’s borrowing requirement. Spain has been at the centre of the recent European sovereign debt crisis, not least because of sizeable failures in meeting...