The Ifo Business Climate is the most important indicator for the business cycle in Germany. In 1993 the connection between the two components of the business climate – business situation and business expectations – was graphically portrayed by Ifo in a 4-quadrant scheme: the Ifo Business...

This paper investigates the statistical features and the macroeconomic determinants of youth unemployment in a number of European countries. First, it explores its short and long memory properties by estimating both autoregressive and fractional integration models. This type of analysis sheds...

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of different unemployment theories in three major economies, namely the UK, the US and Japan, by estimating the degree of dependence in the unemployment series. Both univariate and multivariate long memory methods are used. The results vary...

The ‘saving for a rainy day’ hypothesis implies that households’ saving decisions reflect that they can (rationally) predict future income declines. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis plays a key role in discussions of fiscal policy multipliers and it holds under the null that the...

In this paper we use fractional integration techniques to examine the degree of integration of four US stock market indices, namely the Standard and Poor, Dow Jones, Nasdaq and NYSE, at a daily frequency from January 2005 till December 2009. We analyse the weekly structure of the series and...

In this paper we re-investigate the comovements of interest rates in the G7-countries. We propose a structured modus operandi to analyze the time series characteristics of interest rates and to test for common features. We conduct cointegration, serial correlation common feature and codependence...

This paper deals with the economics of Bitcoins in two ways. First, it broadens the discussion on how to capture Bitcoins using economic terms. Center stage in this analysis take the discussion of some unique characteristics of this market as well as the comparison of Bitcoins and gold. Second,...

We examine the daily exchange rate dynamics in selected new EU member states (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia) using GARCH and TARCH models between 1999 and 2006. Despite these countries adopted inflation targeting regime, they occasionally tried to manage their exchange...

We analyse whether tests of PPP exhibit erratic behaviour (as previously reported by Caporale et al., 2003) even when (possibly unwarranted) homogeneity and proportionality restrictions are not imposed, and trivariate cointegration (stage-three) tests between the nominal exchange rate, domestic...

On 21 July 2005 China adopted an undisclosed basket exchange rate regime. We formally assess and envisage the gradual evolution of the renminbi over time. We utilize nonlinear dependencies in the renminbi exchange rate and describe the smooth transition of the renminbi/U.S. dollar (RMB/USD)...