Since the mid-2000s, Japan's industrial production (IP) has been characterized by increasing volatility. To examine the background to this, we apply the structural factor analysis developed by Foerster, Sarte, and Watson (2011) and decompose variations in Japan's IP into aggregate and sectoral...

In this paper we propose a relatively simple procedure to predict Euro-zone industrial production using mostly data derived from the business surveys of the three major economies within the European Monetary Union (France, Germany, and Italy). The basic idea is that of estimating business...

The purpose of this paper is to explain both the need and the procedures of unit-root testing to a wider audience. The topic of stationarity testing in general and unit root testing in particular is one that covers a vast amount of research. We have been discussing the problem in four different...

Several studies have established the predictive power of the yield curve, i.e.: the difference between long and short term bond rates, in terms of real economic activity, for the U.S. and various European countries. In this paper we use monthly data of the industrial production index of the...

The formation of the European Union (EU) is the one of the biggest political – economic events of the last 50 years. The aim of this study is to develop EU economy functioning system dynamic model. Main research method is system dynamics. General scheme of EU economy system dynamic model is...

In this article we estimate a small dynamic factor model (DFM) for the short-term forecasting of Slovak GDP. The model predicts the developments of real activity in the next two quarters on the basis of monthly data, which are published earlier than GDP. The regular release of various monthly...

Joining the European Union big opportunities in the international markets have opened for Latvia. Paper purpose is to investigate influence of international integration processes on development of economy of Latvia. In the paper Latvian economic indicators before and after entering the EU are...

Joining the European Union big opportunities in the international markets have opened for Latvia. Paper purpose is to investigate influence of international integration processes on development of economy of Latvia. Latvia's incoming in EU increased the amount of received means from structural...

In order to obtain plausible scenarios of economic development in Romania up to the 2015 horizon, we used a mix of forecasting models, from ones classified as “medium-term” to those covering longer forecasting periods. Based on the analysis of the economic transition period we mainly used...

The paper analyses the dynamics and structure of GDP in Romania during the transition period. Starting from the classical Cobb-Douglas production model, the paper investigates different scenarios for the Romanian economy on the basis of different assumptions regarding the model’s parameters....