The Eurozone is confronted within the current crisis with unprecedented challenges. The measures adopted and implemented by the policymakers over the past quarters were not perceived credible by the financial markets, given the dimension of macroeconomic disequilibria in the region, the...

This paper presents a simple new method for estimating the size of wealth effects on aggregate consumption. The method exploits the well-documented sluggishness of consumption growth (often interpreted as habits in the asset pricing literature) to distinguish between short-run and long-run...

Perron and Wada (2009) propose a new method of decomposition of the GDP in its trend and cycle components, which overcomes the identi.cation problems of models of unobserved components (UC) and ARIMA models and at the same time, admits non linearities and asym- metries in cycles. The method...

The Okun law for Andalusia and Spain is estimated using quarterly data (1984-2000). We take a VAR approach that allows us to unveil the different dynamic behaviour of the relationship between the output gap and the unemployment gap in the two economies, as well as the asymmetric nature of that...

We examine sentiment variables as new predictors for US recessions. We combine sentiment variables with either classical recession predictors or with common factors based on a large panel of macroeconomic and ?nancial variables. Sentiment variables hold vast predictive power for US recessions in...

The role the real exchange rate plays in determining current account balances has gathered momentum as East and Southeast Asian countries have seen increasingly positive current account balances. This paper analyses the evolution of current accounts in the region. A cointegrating relationship...

The introduction of Euro currency was a game-changing event intended to induce convergence of

This paper explores the existence of a bounce-back effect in inventory investment using the European Commission opinion survey on stocks of finished products in manufacturing and retail trade sectors for France, Germany and a European aggregate, from 1985q1 to 2011q4. Our empirical findings...

We examine the finite-sample performance of small versus large scale dynamic factor models. Our Monte Carlo analysis reveals that small scale factor models out-perform large scale models in factor estimation and forecasting for high levels of cross-correlation across the idiosyncratic errors of...

In this paper we propose a new real-time forecasting model for euro area GDP growth, D€STINY, which attempts to bridge the existing gap in the literature between large- and small-scale dynamic factor models. By adopting a disaggregated modelling approach, D€STINY uses most of the information...