For most academics and policy makers, the depth of the 2008–09 financial crisis, its longevity and its impacts on the real economy resulted from an erosion of confidence. This paper proposes to assess empirically the link between consumer sentiment and consumption expenditures for the United...

Using survey data from six Asian-Pacific countries, we report that professional forecasters apply the wage Phillips curve, the price Phillips curve, and Okun's law when forecasting macroeconomic variables. This result is robust when using time-varying coefficients, different forecast horizons...

Having efficient and accurate samplers for simulating the posterior distribution is crucial for Bayesian analysis. We develop a generic posterior simulator called the "dynamic striated Metropolis-Hastings (DSMH)" sampler. Grounded in the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, it draws its strengths from...

Forecast evaluation often compares a parsimonious null model to a larger model that nests the null model. Under the null that the parsimonious model generates the data, the larger model introduces noise into its forecasts by estimating parameters whose population values are zero. We observe that...

This document analyzes inflation, exchange rate, interest rate, and GDP growth forecasts from the monthly Survey of Professional Forecasters, maintained by Banco de México. The study concentrates on the mean across forecasters for the period from January 1995 to April 2008. Their efficiency in...

The goal of every investment is to obtain maximum return with minimum risk. Foreign exchange risk could cause that a portfolio return differs from the fundamentals of the assets which composes it. In this paper we study, by using the calibration method, the behaviour and size of the spot,...

Ways of extracting financial condition indices (FCI) are explored and alternative FCIs external to the Chinese economy are constructed to model their predictive content. The exploration aims at highlighting the rich and varied dynamic features of financial variables underlying FCIs and the...