A sizeable literature reports that financial market analysts and forecasters herd for reputational reasons. Using new data from a large survey of professional forecasters' expectations about stock market movements, we find strong evidence that the expected average of all forecasters' forecasts...

This paper empirically examines price formation in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Our analysis shows that unexpected allocations of European Union Allowances (EUAs) lead to pronounced price reactions of the expected signs. Moreover, we find evidence that the adjustment of...

This paper discusses a tool for optimization of econometric models based on genetic algorithms. First, we briefly describe the concept of this optimization technique. Then, we explain the design of a specifically developed algorithm and apply it to a difficult econometric problem, the...

We document using the ZEW panel of German stock market forecasters that weak forecasters tend to be overconfident in the sense that they provide extreme forecasts and their confidence intervals are less likely to contain eventual realizations. Moderate filters based on forecast accuracy over...

There is still considerable dispute about the magnitude of labor supply elasticities. While differences in micro and macro estimates are recently attributed to frictions and adjustment costs, we show that relatively low labor supply elasticities derived from microeconometric models can also be...

The study of the innovative output of firms often relies on a count of patents filed at one single office of reference such as the European Patent Office (EPO). Yet, not all firms file their patents at the EPO, raising the specter of a selection bias. Using a novel dataset of the whole...

Previous reviews of static labor supply estimations concentrate mainly on the evidence from the 1980s and 1990s, Anglo-Saxon countries and early generations of labor supply modeling. This paper provides a fresh characterization of steady-state labor supply elasticities for Western Europe and the...

The specification of parameters is a crucial task in the development of economic models. The objective of this paper is to improve the standard parameter specification of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. On that account, we illustrate how Optimal Fingerprint Detection Methods (OFDM)...

In this paper we analyze the macroeconomic forecasts of the Consensus Forecasts for 12 countries over the period from 1996 to 2006 regarding bias and information efficiency. A pooled approach is employed which permits the evaluation of all forecasts for each target variable over 24 horizons...

The paper presents an econometric evaluation of the effects of subsidised non-profit temporary employment agencies - a programme of the West German active labour market policy - on individual labour market outcomes. The empirical analysis is based on individual data from files for...