The paper investigates the link between domestic demand pressure and exports by considering an error correction dynamic panel model for eleven euro area countries over the last two decades. The results suggest that there is a statistically signi?cant substitution e¤ect between domestic and...

How should we forecast GDP? Should we forecast directly the overall GDP or aggregate the forecasts for each of its components using some level of disaggregation? The search for the answer continues to motivate several horse races between these two approaches. Nevertheless, independently of the...

Traditionally, exports behavior is modeled only as a function of the foreign demand and the real exchange rate. However, it is by now widely acknowledged that these variables are not able to fully explain exports developments. This paper suggests considering domestic demand pressure as an...

Institutions which publish macroeconomic forecasts usually do not rely on a single econometric model to generate their forecasts. The combination of judgements with information from different models complicates the problem of characterizing the predictive density. This paper proposes a...

In recent years, one has witnessed a widespread attention on the way monetary policy is conducted and in particular on the role of the so-called monetary policy rules. The conventional approach in the literature consists in estimating reaction functions for a monetary authority (the Federal...

This paper estimates the direct effect of low-cost countries on Portuguese manufacturing import prices, using detailed data both by product and by geographical market for the period 1997-2006. The results point to a negative but modest direct effect when compared with studies available for other...

In macroeconomic forecasting, in spite of its important role in prices and activity developments, oil prices are usually taken as an exogenous variable for which assumptions have to be made. This paper evaluates the forecasting performance of futures markets prices against other popular...

Policymakers need timely and reliable information on the current state of the economy as macroeconomic forecasts and policy decisions are strongly affected by the quality and completeness of this assessment. Therefore, forecasters are always in search of new indicators that are related with the...

This article addresses the competition faced by exporters as a particular motivation to compute an effective exchange rate, discussing some important implications of the simplifying assumptions usually made regarding the selection of competitors and differences in product specialization....

This paper analyses the evolution of Portuguese terms of trade over the last decades. Firstly, their evolution is described: (i) terms of trade registered an upward trend since the second half of the 80s, after the apparent stability observed since 1950; (ii) this was a generalized phenomenon across...