The introduction of a common monetary policy in eleven European countries increased the need for leading indicators for that area. A reliable leading indicator should possess the following properties: (1) The movements in the indicator series should resemble those in the business cycle reference...

In this paper we used a data set constructed for a companion paper (Fritsche/Stephan, 2000) where we explored the leading indicator properties of different time series for the German business cycle. Now we test for the ability of different indicator series to forecast recessions by using a...

A reliable leading indicator should possess the following properties: (1) The movements in the indicator series should resemble those in the business cycle reference series. (2) The relation between the reference series and the indicator should be statistically significant and stable over time....

This paper argues that the tradtitional way of gauging a country's fiscal policy stance by looking at government budget deficit or cyclically adjusted budget deficits is misleading in the case of China, since a lot of what usually would be considered fiscal policy is conducted via investment by...

This paper calculates a unit labor-cost based real effective exchange rate for China for the period 1987-2002. It examines carefully which data sources can be used given the known limitations of Chinese data and constructs to them together with internationally available unit labor cost...

The paper develops a three-asset-portfolio model to analyse consequences of foreign exchange market operations by Asian central banks on the exchange rates between euro, dollar and yen. Both an analytical as well as a graphical solution is presented. It is found that -- contrary to public belief...

In the current policy debate, it is often argued that foreign exchange interventions by Asian central banks lead to an excessive appreciation of the euro against the dollar. This paper shows that in a three asset portfolio model the opposite holds: Interventions by Japan's central bank...