We estimate Okun's law, the negative relationship between output and the unemployment rate, at the sector level for the US, the UK, Japan, and Switzerland to test several hypotheses that may explain why the aggregate Okun's coeffcients are different across countries. Specifically, we show that...

We estimate Okun's law, the negative relationship between output and the unemployment rate, at the sector level for the US, the UK, Japan, and Switzerland to test several hypotheses that may explain why the aggregate Okun's coeffcients are different across countries. Specifically, we show that...

Not according to our data. We use two data sets to test whether professional forecasters follow uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) when making their exchange rate predictions both based on point prediction and direction. We find that professional forecasters generally do not follow UIP across...

Im letzten Teil der dreiteiligen Artikelserie zu regionalen Konjunkturzyklen in Deutschland wird untersucht, ob die Wirtschaftszyklen der Bundesländer im Zeitverlauf ähnlicher werden, d.h. konvergieren. Aufbauend auf Teil II werden zunächst die für alle Bundesländer berechneten Wendepunkte...

The Ifo Institute for Economic Research has been conducting regular business surveys since its foundation in 1949. The most well-known of Ifo's surveys is the Ifo Business Survey (ifo Konjunkturtest). The micro data of the Ifo Business Survey are accessible to external researchers on-site at Ifo...

Der Beitrag stellt die Außenhandelsbeziehungen zwischen den 15 alten und den acht neuen mittel- und osteuropäischen Mitgliedern der Europäischen Union in den Mittelpunkt. Werden sie durch die EU-Osterweiterung zusätzliche Impulse erhalten? Diese Frage wird im Folgenden mit Hilfe des...

In this paper we present the Ifo Investment Database, which provides annual investment data for 12 investment assets in 50 German industries from 1991 onward. The data is consistent with national accounts statistics provided by the German Federal Statistical Office and is based on investments in...

The use of large datasets for macroeconomic forecasting has received a great deal of interest recently. Boosting is one possible method of using high-dimensional data for this purpose. It is a stage-wise additive modelling procedure, which, in a linear specification, becomes a variable selection...