Germany's export market share increased since 2000, while most industrial countries experienced declines. This study explores four explanations and evaluates their empirical contributions: (i) improved cost competitiveness, (ii) ties to fast growing trading partners, (iii) increased demand for...

This study explores the effects of labor and product market deregulation on employment growth. Our empirical results, based on an OECD country panel from 1990-2004, suggest that lower levels of product and labor market regulation foster employment growth, including through sizable interaction...

For short forecast horizons, we find statistical evidence that the oil price volatility observed ex post explains ex-ante disagreement between oil price forecasters of the ECB’s professional survey. Since the forecasts considered are quarterly average prices, the observed disagreement is...

This paper reconciles contradictory findings obtained from forecast evaluations: the existence of systematic errors and the failure to reject rationality in the presence of such errors. Systematic errors in one economic state may offset the opposite types of errors in the other state such that...

Campbell and Vuolteenaho (CV, 2004) empirically decompose the S&P 500's dividend yield from 1927 to 2002 to derive a measure of residual mispricing attributed to inflation illusion. They argue that the strong positive correlation between the mispricing component and inflation is strong evidence...

Given the secular and sharp rise in oil prices over the past decade, this study analyses the impact that the spike in oil prices has on tanker rates. We investigate a dynamic model explaining spot tanker rates. The magnitude of the impact of oil prices on the shipping industry, in terms of the...

The Federal Reserve Greenbook forecasts of real GDP, inflation and unemployment are analysed for the period 1974-1997. We consider whether these forecasts exhibit systematic bias, and whether efficient use is made of information, that is, whether revisions to these forecasts over time are...

We show that systematic forecast errors reveal that the Fed is "surprised" by real and inflationary cycles. The Fed knows the state of the economy for the current quarter, but cannot predict it one-quarter ahead.

Recent research has documented that the Federal Reserve produces systematic errors in forecasting inflation, real GDP growth, and the unemployment rate, even though these forecasts are unbiased. We show that these systematic errors reveal that the Fed is “surprised” by real and inflationary...