Several approaches for subset recovery and improved forecasting accuracy have been proposed and studied. One way is to apply a regularization strategy and solve the model selection task as a continuous optimization problem. One of the most popular approaches in this research field is given by...

We report results on the ex ante predictability of monthly excess stock returns in Germany using real-time and revised macroeconomic data. Our real-time macroeconomic data cover the period 1994-2005. We report three results. 1) Real-time macroeconomic data did not contribute much to ex ante...

We compared forecasts of stock market volatility based on real-time and revised macroeconomic data. To this end, we used a new dataset on monthly real-time macroeconomic variables for Germany. The dataset covers the period 1994-2005. We used a statistical, a utility-based, and an options-based...

Standard measures of consumer price inflation are based on a bundle of representative goods. It is well known that this approach might overstate inflation for new products and products with fast increasing quality. For this reason, hedonic adjustment methods have been proposed and introduced in...

The macroeconomic development in West Germany in the aftermath of unification was characterized by a boom period in 1990/1991, a deep recession in 1992/1993 and a slow recovery since then. In East Germany, in contrast, unification induced a breakdown of production and employment followed by a...

Unification fundamentally changed the terms of quantitative macroeconomic analysis for Germany. Two main areas concerned are data availability for the eastern part of Germany and structural changes within the behavioural equations after unification. Our paper presents results from the estimation...

German unifikation hit the West German economy in a prosperous and appeared as a huge demand shock at least for the first few quarters. This combination resulted in a major increase of imports from the main trading partners of West Germany, which may have helped to cushion recessionary trends...

The rising trends both in drug addiction and crime rates are of major public concern in Germany. Surprisingly, the economic theory of crime seems to ignore the drugs-crime nexus, whereas the criminological literature considers illicit drug use a main reason of criminal activities. This paper...

Using daily Bundesbank foreign exchange market intervention data, we employ a multinomial logit approach to estimate an intervention reaction function for the German Central Bank using options implied volatilities and the deviation of the exchange rate from its target level as explanatory...

This paper elaborates on the link between financial market volatility and real economic activity. Using monthly data for Germany from 1968 to 1998, we specify GARCH models to capture the variability of stock market prices, of the real exchange rate, and of a long-term and of a short-term rate of...