The paper investigates whether transforming a time series leads to an improvement in forecasting accuracy. The class of transformations that is considered is the Box-Cox power transformation, which applies to series measured on a ratio scale. We propose a nonparametric approach for estimating...

Multivariate simultaneous equations models were used extensively for macroeconometric analysis when Sims (1980) advocated vector autoregressive (VAR) models as alternatives. At that time longer and more frequently observed macroeconomic time series called for models which described the dynamic...

Despite the fact that many aggregates are nonlinear functions and the aggregation weights of many macroeconomic aggregates are timevarying, much of the literature on forecasting aggregates considers the case of linear aggregates with fixed, time-invariant aggregation weights. In this study a...

Aggregated times series variables can be forecasted in different ways. For example, they may be forecasted on the basis of the aggregate series or forecasts of disaggregated variables may be obtained first and then these forecasts may be aggregated. A number of forecasts are presented and...

Sometimes forecasts of the original variable are of interest although a variable appears in logarithms (logs) in a system of time series. In that case converting the forecast for the log of the variable to a naive forecast of the original variable by simply applying the exponential...

This paper deals with the determinants of agents’ acquisition of information. Our econometric evidence shows that the general index of Italian share-prices and the series of Italy’s financial newspaper sales are cointegrated, and the former series Granger-causes the latter, thereby giving...

In structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models identifying restrictions for shocks and impulse responses are usually derived from economic theory or institutional constraints. Sometimes the restrictions are insufficient for identifying all shocks and impulse responses. In this paper it is...

Previous euro area money demand studies have used aggregated national time series data from the countries participating in the European Monetary Union (EMU). However, aggregation may be problematic because macroeconomic convergence processes have taken place in the countries of interest....

The role of expectations for economic fluctuations has received considerable attention in recent business cycle analysis. We exploit Markov regime switching models to identify shocks in cointegrated structural vector autoregressions and investigate different identification schemes for bivariate...

A central issue of monetary policy analysis is the specification of monetary policy shocks. In a structural vector autoregressive setting there has been some controversy about which restrictions to use for identifying the shocks because standard theories do not provide enough information to...