Imports of manufactured goods from China to Australia grew more than eleven-fold in real US dollar terms between 1991 and 2006. This study uses differences in industry structure between regions to identify the impact of that growth on labour market outcomes in Australia. Overall, the growth in...

Density forecasts have become quite important in economics and finance. For example, such forecasts play a central role in modern financial risk management techniques like Value at Risk. This paper suggests a regression based density forecast evaluation framework as a simple alternative to other...

Alternative strategies for predicting stock market volatility are examined. In out-of-sample forecasting experiments implied-volatility information, derived from contemporaneously observed option prices or history-based volatility predictors, such as GARCH models, are investigated, to determine...

We analyze investment decisions when information is costly, with and without delegation to an agent. We use a rational-inattention model and compare it with a canonical signal-extraction model. We identify three "investment conditions". In "sour" conditions, no information is acquired and no...

Owing to past structural reforms, Costa Rica has enjoyed robust GDP growth and productivity levels are gradually converging towards the OECD average. However, large GDP per capita and productivity gaps persist. In addition, not everyone has benefited from this growth. Inequality has increased...

The carry-over effect is the advance contribution of the old year to growth in the new year. Among practitioners the informative content of the carry-over effect for short-term forecasting is undisputed and is used routinely in economic forecasting. In this paper, the carry-over effect is...

This paper describes a forecasting exercise of close-to-open returns on major global stock indices, based on price patterns from foreign markets that have become available overnight. As the close-to-open gap is a scalar response variable to a functional variable, it is natural to focus on...

Governments and central banks need to have an accurate and timely assessment of Gross Domestic Product's (GDP) growth rate for the current quarter, as this is essential for providing a reliable and early analysis of the current economic situation. This paper presents a series of models conceived...