Deviations of policy interest rates from the levels implied by the Taylor rule have been persistent before the financial crisis and increased especially after the turn of the century. Compared to the Taylor benchmark, policy rates were often too low. This paper provides evidence that both...

This article explores whether common technical trading strategies used in equity markets can be employed profitably in the markets for WTI and Brent crude oil. The strategies tested are Bollinger Bands, based on a mean-reverting hedge portfolio of WTI and Brent. The trading systems are tested...

In the wind power industry, wind speed forecasts are obtained and transformed into wind power forecasts. The Mycielski algorithm has proven to be an accurate predictor for wind speed in short-term scenarios. Moreover, Mycielski has the capability of forecasting wind power directly, instead of...

Czarnitzki and Stadtmann (2005) measure the interdependence of demand for investment advice (approximated by sales of investor magazines) and stock prices. They find strong evidence that confirms the presence of the disposition effect, i.e. the empirical observation that investors sell winners...

We estimate Okun coefficients for five different age cohorts for several Eurozone countries. We find a stable pattern for all countries: The relationship between business-cycle fluctuations and the unemployment rate is the strongest for the youngest cohort and gets smaller for the elderly cohorts.

We analyse the relationship between the debt to GDP ratio and real per capita GDP growth for the euro area members by distinguishing between periods of sustainable and non-sustainable debt. Thresholds are theory-based and depend on the macroeconomic framework. If the interest rate exceeds...

The paper investigates Scandinavian countries and its respective male and female youth unemployment rates. Okun's law is used to estimate age-cohort and gender specific Okun coefficients to make inference on the business-cycle dependence of young people across Scandinavian countries.

In recent years youth unemployment rates across Europe soared, causing the European Commission to take actions through initiatives to counter this development. This article examines youth unemployment development in selected CEE countries and compares them to the EU 15. We use Okun's law and...