The majority of microfinance impact studies focus on finding their effect on a specific group of beneficiaries, in contrast we aim to identify the impact on whole economies (economic growth, and financial sector development and reductions in income inequalities), which is an important policy...

We study the changing international transmission of US financial shocks over the period 1971-2009. Financial shocks are defined as unexpected changes of a financial conditions index (FCI), recently developed by Hatzius et al. (2010), for the US. We use a time-varying factor-augmented VAR to...

The paper analyses and compares the role that the tightening in liquidity conditions and the collapse in risk appetite played for the global transmission of the financial crisis. Dealing with identification and the large dimensionality of the empirical exercise with a Global VAR approach, the...

The paper analyses the transmission of liquidity shocks and risk shocks to global financial markets. Using a Global VAR methodology, the findings reveal fundamental differences in the transmission strength and pattern between the 2007-08 financial crisis and the 2010-11 sovereign debt crisis....

The dynamic behavior of the term structure of interest rates is difficult to replicate with models, and even models with a proven track record of empirical performance have underperformed since the early 2000s. On the other hand, survey expectations are accurate predictors of yields, but only...

This paper is concerned with methods for analysing spatial data. After initial discussion on the nature of spatial data, including the concept of randomness, we focus most of our attention on linear regression models that involve interactions between agents across space. The introduction of...

This paper provides an overview of the panel VAR models used in macroeconomics and finance. It discusses what are their distinctive features, what they are used for, and how they can be derived from economic theory. It also describes how they are estimated and how shock identification is...

We find that forecasts from DSGE models are not more accurate than either times series models or official forecasts, but neither are they any worse. We also find that all three types of forecast failed to predict the recession that started in 2007 and continued to forecast poorly even after the...

The main goal of this article is to provide an answer to the question: "Does anything forecast exchange rates, and if so, which variables?". It is well known that exchange rate fluctuations are very difficult to predict using economic models, and that a random walk forecasts exchange rates...

Prediction markets--markets used to forecast future events--have been used to accurately forecast the outcome of political contests, sporting events, and, occasionally, economic outcomes. This chapter summarizes the latest research on prediction markets in order to further their utilization by...