Common approaches to test for the economic value of directional forecasts are based on the classical Chi-square test for independence, Fisher’s exact test or the Pesaran and Timmerman (1992) test for market timing. These tests are asymptotically valid for serially independent observations....

In this paper we adopt a principal components analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality of the term structure and employ autoregressive models (AR) to forecast principal components which, in turn, are used to forecast swap rates. Arguing in favor of structural variation, we propose data...

We consider the problem of ex-ante forecasting conditional correlation patterns using ultra high frequency data. Flexible semiparametric predictors referring to the class of dynamic panel and dynamic factor models are adopted for daily forecasts. The parsimonious set up of our approach allows to...

The potential interactions among fiscal policies, investments and economicgrowth are complex and manifold.In this paper, we will perform a systematic comparative analysis of the variouseconomic insights that arecurrently available on these complex relationships, both theoretically (by aselective...

The issue of whether the public sector enhances or retards long-run economic growth has been debated passionately in recent years. In this paper we use meta-analysis to shed light on the issue. A sample of 93 published studies, yielding 123 meta-observations, is used to examine the robustness of...

In this paper we offer a meta-analysis approach to (simulation) studies on environmental tax reform (ETR). The underlying studies look both at environmental effects (e.g. reduction in CO2 emission) and economic effects (e.g. change in gross domestic product) following such a tax reform. The...