Studies on growth performance and catch-up and convergence of countries require and make extensive use of internationally and temporally comparable data on real gross domestic product (GDP) expressed in a common currency unit. The International Comparison Program (ICP), a project supported by...

The aim of the paper is to fulfill the gap for testing hypotheses on parameters of the log-normal stochastic volatility model, more precisely, to propose finite sample exact tests in the sense that the tests have correct levels in small samples. To do this, we examine method-of-moments-based...

Copulas offer a convenient way of modelling multivariate observations and capturing the intrinsic dependence between the components of a multivariate random variable. A semiparametric method for estimating the dependence parameters of copulas was proposed by Genest, Ghoudi and Rivest (1995), in...

We propose a new model for the variance between multiple time series, the Regime Switching Dynamic Correlation. We decompose the covariances into correlations and standard deviations and the correlation matrix follow a regime switching model; it is constant within a regime but different across...

Recently financial econometricians have shifted their attention from point and interval forecasts to density forecasts mainly to address the issue of the huge loss of information that results from depicting portfolio risk by a measure of dispersion alone. One of the major problems in this area...

Developments in the global electronics industry are typically monitored by tracking indicators that span a whole spectrum of activities in the sector. However, these indicators invariably give mixed signals at each point in time, thereby hampering efforts at prediction. In this paper, we present...

In this paper, we examine whether industry-level forecasts of CPI and PPI inflation can be improved using the ``exchange rate pass-through" effect, that is, when one accounts for the variability of the exchange rate and import prices. An exchange rate depreciation leading to a higher level of...

The Stock--Watson coincident index and its subsequent extensions assume a static linear one-factor model for the component indicators. Such assumption is restrictive in practice, however, with as few as four indicators. In fact, such assumption is unnecessary if one poses the index construction...

This paper considers a factor model in which independent component analysis (ICA) is employed to construct common factors out of a large number of macroeconomic time series. The ICA has been regarded as a better method to separate unobserved sources that are statistically independent to each...

To understand the consequences of the presence of international safety nets on governments' incentives to undertake reforms, we model IFIs´ interventions as country insurance policies. We find that country insurance (especially when made contingent on negative external shocks) is more likely...