The interrelationship between financial constraints and firm activity is a hotly debated issue. The way firms cope with financial constraints is fundamental to the analysis of monetary transmission, of financial stability and of growth and development. The CBI Industrial Trends Survey contains...

This paper considers Bayesian regression with normal and doubleexponential priors as forecasting methods based on large panels of time series. We show that, empirically, these forecasts are highly correlated with principal component forecasts and that they perform equally well for a wide range...

We use oil price forecasts from the Consensus Economic Forecast poll to analyze how forecasters form their expectations. Our findings seem to indicate that the extrapolative as well as the regressive expectation formation hypothesis play a role. Standard measures of forecast accuracy reveal...

This paper investigates economic convergence in real income per capita between 27 European Union countries. We employ a non-linear latent factor framework to study transitional behavior among economies between 1970 and 2010. Our results offer important insights on the economic catch-up exhibited...