Empirical evidence suggests that many macroeconomic and financial time series are subject to occasional structural breaks. In this paper we present analytical results quantifying the effects of such breaks on the correlation between the forecast and the realization and on the ability to forecast...

Autoregressive models are used routinely in forecasting and often lead to better performance than more complicated models. However, empirical evidence is also suggesting that the autoregressive representations of many macroeconomic and financial time series are likely to be subject to structural...

In this paper, an Unobserved Components Model is employed to decompose German real GDP into the trend, cycle and seasonal components and the working day effect. The most important findings are: 1) The growth rate of potential output declined from 4.2 per cent in the sixties to 1.4 per cent at...

We analyze the role of forward-looking indicators, like the IFO business climate indicator and asset prices, in German monetary transmission. We show that the use of both the IFO indicator and asset prices improves the performance and interpretation of a Vector AutoRegression (VAR) model of...

This paper studies the information content of some Ifo indicators. In particular, we investigate whether two Ifo indicators, one on the current business situation, the other on current production development, provide information on revisions of German industrial production. A new feature of our...

Business climate indicators are used to receive early signals for turning points in the general business cycle. Therefore methods for the detection of turning points in time series are required. Estimations of slopes of a smooth component in the data can be calculated with local polynomial...

This paper examines stock market integration between the ASEAN five and the US and China, respectively, over the period from November 2002 to March 2018. The linkages between both aggregate and financial sector stock indices (both weekly and monthly) are analysed using fractional integration and...

This paper uses fractional integration techniques to examine the stochastic behaviour of high and low stock prices in Europe and then to test for the possible existence of long-run linkages between them by looking at the range, i.e., the difference between the two logged series. Specifically,...

This paper examines persistence, structural breaks and non-linearities in the case of five European stock market indices, namely the FTSE100 (UK), DAX30 (Germany), CAC40 (France), IBEX35 (Spain) and FTSE MIB40 (Italy), using fractional integration methods. The empirical results provide no...

This paper uses a modelling framework which includes two singularities (or poles) in the spectral density function, one corresponding to the long-run (zero) frequency and the other to the cyclical (non-zero) frequency. The adopted specification is very general, since it allows for fractional...