By estimating a staggered price model over the period 1980q1-2010q2, this paper documents that, after the euro changeover, Italian retailers have increased the number of price adjustments, which has translated into a higher inflation rate, with a detrimental effect on the competitiveness of the...

This paper examines several US monthly financial time series data using fractional integration and cointegration techniques. The univariate analysis based on fractional integration aims to determine whether the series are I(1) (in which case markets might be efficient) or alternatively I(d) with...

This paper analyses two well-known features of interest rates, namely their time dependence and their cyclical structure. Specifically, it focuses on the monthly Euribor rate, using monthly data from January 1994 to May 2011. Models based on fractional integration at the long run or zero...

This paper is concerned with the statistical behavior of oil prices in two ways. It, firstly, applies a combined jump GARCH in order to characterize the behavior of daily, weekly as well as monthly oil prices. Secondly, it relates its empirical results to implications of Hotelling-type resource...

In this paper, we propose a framework to evaluate the information content of subjective expert density forecasts using micro data from the ECB’s Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). A key aspect of our analysis is the use of scoring functions which evaluate the entire predictive...

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 examines the relationship between US disposable personal income (DPI) and house price index (HPI) during the last twenty years applying fractional integration and long-range dependence techniques to monthly data from January 1991 to July 2010. The empirical findings indicate 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...

Business cycle indicators are important instruments for monitoring economic development. When employing indicators one usually relies on a sound statistical database. This paper deals with indicator development in a sparse data situation. Indicator building is merged with temporal...

In this paper we use the Hodrick-Prescott filter for analysing global temperature data. We are especially concerned with a reliable estimation of the trend component at the end of the data sample. To this end we employ time-varying values for the penalization parameter. The optimal values are...