This paper investigates the effects of imposing invalid cointegration restrictions or ignoring valid ones on the estimation, testing and forecasting properties of the bivariate, first-order, vector autoregressive (VAR(1)) model. We first consider nearly cointegrated VARs, that is, stable systems...

We compare models for forecasting growth and inflation in the enlarged euro area. Forecasts are built from univariate autoregressive and single-equation models. The analysis is undertaken for both individual countries and EU aggregate variables. Aggregate forecasts are constructed by both...