A general procedure is proposed to identify changes in asset return interdependence over time using entropy theory. The approach provides a decomposition of interdependence in terms of comoments including coskewness, cokurtosis and covolatility as well as more traditional measures based on...

This paper examines which measures of financial conditions are informative about the tail risks to output growth in the euro area. The Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS) is more informative than indicators focusing on narrower segments of financial markets or their simple aggregation...

Using a panel data set of selected countries, this paper shows that the inequality-growth relationship follows an ordinary-U curve during the period 1970-98, in which inequality first decreases and then increases with economic growth. In addition, there is some evidence that the increasing...

This paper derives forecasts for euro area real GDP growth based on a bottom up approach from the production side. That is, GDP is forecast via the forecasts of value added across the different branches of activity, which is quite new in the literature. Linear regression models in the form of...

We propose a benchmark prior for the estimation of vector autoregressions: a prior about initial growth rates of the modeled series. We first show that the Bayesian vs frequentist small sample bias controversy is driven by different default initial conditions. These initial conditions are...

Stock market return is one of financial variables that contain information to forecast real activity such as industrial production and real GDP growth. However, it is still controversial that stock market return can have a predictive content on real activity. This paper attempts to investigate...

This study re-visits the health-income nexus for Malaysia using alternative econometric techniques which addressed on the small sample problem. This study covers the period of 1970-2009. Based on the appealing small sample properties, we apply the bounds testing approach to cointegration and the...

The broad purpose of trade liberalisation is to raise the rate of growth of countries on a sustainable basis, consistent with the achievement of other macroeconomic objectives. In this paper we consider whether trade liberalisation in seventeen countries of Latin America has improved the...

This paper examines the process of trade liberalisation in Mexico, particularly since the mid-1980s and the signing of the NAFTA agreement, and its impact on economic performance. The average growth of GDP of the Mexican economy since liberalisation has been only one-half the rate...

The aim of this paper is to disentangle the effects of trade liberalisation during the mid-1980s from the liberalisation involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on exports, imports and the balance of payments in Mexico. The main empirical results suggest that the trade...