Due to their indeterminacies, static and dynamic factor models require identifying assumptions to guarantee uniqueness of the parameter estimates. The indeterminacy of the parameter estimates with respect to orthogonal transformations is known as the rotation problem. The typical strategy in...

Due to their well-known indeterminacies, factor models require identifying assumptions to guarantee unique parameter estimates. For Bayesian estimation, these identifying assumptions are usually implemented by imposing constraints on certain model parameters. This strategy, however, may result...

In this paper, we explore the role of labor markets for monetary policy in the euro area in a New Keynesian model in which labor markets are characterized by search and matching frictions. We first investigate to which extent a more flexible labor market would alter the business cycle behavior...

This paper estimates whether learning-by-doing effects or cleansing effects of recessions drive the endogenous component of productivity in the United States. Using Bayesian estimation techniques we find that external and internal learning-by-doing effects dominate. We find no evidence for...

Hours per capita measures based on the private sector as usually included in the set of observables for estimating macroeconomic models are affected by low-frequent demographic trends and sectoral shifts that cannot be explained by standard models. Further, model-based output gap estimates are...

The paper investigates the sources of macroeconomic forecast errors in Germany. The predictions of the so-called "six leading" research institutes are analyzed. The forecast errors are discussed within an aggregate demand/supply scheme. Structural Vector Autoregressive Models are estimated to...

Long memory (long-term dependence) of volatility counts as one of the ubiquitous stylized facts of financial data. Inspired by the long memory property, multifractal processes have recently been introduced as a new tool for modeling financial time series. In this paper, we propose a parsimonious...

Taking robotic patents between 1977 and 2017 and building upon the topic modeling technique, we extract their latent topics, analyze how important these topics are over time, and how they are related to each other looking at how often they are recombined in the same patents. This allows us to...

Based on a novel dataset, the "German Management and Organizational Practices" (GMOP) Survey, we calculate establishment specific management scores following Bloom and van Reenen as indicators of management quality. We find substantial heterogeneity in management practices across establishments...

Learning-by-exporting proponents argue that exporting increases productivity by exposing producers to new technologies or through product quality upgrading. This study is based on the observation that the technological superiority and severity of product quality requirements are not the same in...