In this paper I propose a novel optimal linear filter for smoothing, trend and signal extraction for time series with a unit root. The filter is based on the Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) methodology, takes the form of a particular moving average and is different from other linear filters...

With the aid of econometric modeling, I investigate whether rapidly increasing house prices necessarily imply the existence of a bubble that will eventually burst. I consider four alternative econometric methods to construct indicators of housing market imbalances for the US, Finland and Norway....

This chapter examines the problems of dealing with trending type data when there is uncertainty over whether or not we really have unit roots in the data. This uncertainty is practical – for many macroeconomic and financial variables theory does not imply a unit root in the data however unit...

This paper deals with the estimation of employment equations for Germany, which are to be used for forecasting and simulation purposes. The authors estimate both single and system error correction equations for German working hours using quarterly raw data covering the period 1980:1-2004:2....

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the behaviour of Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) sector indices. Specifically, the paper analyzes the returns correlation, serial correlation and heteroscedasticity on the NSE All-share Index, Banking Index, Consumer Goods Index, Oil & Gas Index, NSE 30...

We propose a general framework to study whether and how common trends and common cycles are still present when the original variables are linearly aggregated or only a subset of them is analysed. This is particularly important because of the adoption in empirical analysis of aggregated data on a...