The performance in finite samples is examined of inference obtained by variants of the Arellano-Bond and the Blundell-Bond GMM estimation techniques for single dynamic panel data models with possibly endogenous regressors and cross-sectional heteroskedasticity. By simulation the effects are...

We propose autocorrelation-robust asymptotic variances of the Brier score and Brier skill score, which are generally applicable in circumstances with weak serial correlation. An empirical application in macroeconomics underscores the importance of taking care of serial correlation. We find that...

In this paper, we assess the accuracy of macroeconomic forecasts at the regional level using a unique data set at quarterly frequency. We forecast gross domestic product (GDP) for two German states (Free State of Saxony and Baden-Württemberg) and Eastern Germany. We overcome the problem of a...

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...

We apply non-linear error-correction models to the empirical testing of the sustainability of the government’s intertemporal budget constraint. Our empirical analysis, based on Italy, shows that the Italian government is meeting its intertemporal budget constraint, in spite of the high levels...

This paper characterizes the asymptotic behaviour, as the number of assets gets arbitrarily large, of the portfolio weights for the class of tangency portfolios belonging to the Markowitz paradigm. It is assumed that the joint distribution of asset returns is characterized by a general factor...

The use of large datasets for macroeconomic forecasting has received a great deal of interest recently. Boosting is one possible method of using high-dimensional data for this purpose. It is a stage-wise additive modelling procedure, which, in a linear specification, becomes a variable selection...

This paper investigates the limit properties of mean-variance (mv) and arbitrage pricing (ap) trading strategies using a general dynamic factor model, as the number of assets diverge to infinity. It extends the results obtained in the literature for the exact pricing case to two other cases of...

A central issue of monetary policy analysis is the specification of monetary policy shocks. In a structural vector autoregressive setting there has been some controversy about which restrictions to use for identifying the shocks because standard theories do not provide enoughinformation to fully...

This paper provides a general strategy for analyzing monetary policy in real time which accounts for data uncertainty without explicitly modelling the revision process. The strategy makes use of all the data available from a real-time data matrix and averages model estimates across all data...