Cogan et al. (2009, 2010) claim that the stimulus package passed by the United States Congress in February 2009 had a multiplier far below one. However, the stimulus’ multiplier strongly depends on the assumed monetary policy response. Based on official statements from the Fed chairman, the...

According to the life-cycle theory of consumption and saving, foreseeable retirement events should not reduce consumption. Whereas some consumption expenditures may fall when goods are self-produced (given higher leisure after retirement), this argument applies especially to housing consumption...

While recurring and regular variations of weather conditions are implicitly addressed by standard seasonal adjustment procedures of economic time series, extraordinary weather outcomes are not. We propose a way of measuring aggregate abnormal weather conditions based on available local...

The FEP function package for the gretl program is a collection of functions for computing different types of forecast evaluation statistics as well as tests. For ease of use a common scripting interface framework is provided, which is flexible enough to accommodate future additions. Most of the...

As applied cointegration analysis faces the challenge that (a) potentially relevant variables are unobservable and (b) it is uncertain which covariates are relevant, partial systems are often used and potential (stationary) covariates are ignored. Recently it has been argued that a nominally...

Untersucht wird die Verteilungswirkung einer CO2-Bepreisung in den nicht vom Europäischen Emissionshandel abgedeckten Bereichen Wärme und Verkehr. Aufgrund der schnelleren und einfacheren Umsetzung wurde dabei die Bepreisung in Form einer CO2-Steuer betrachtet. Hierfür wurde ein Preispfad...

Applied time series research often faces the challenge that (a) potentially relevant variables are unobservable, (b) it is fundamentally uncertain which covariates are relevant. Thus cointegration is often analyzed in partial systems, ignoring potential (stationary) covariates. By simulating...

We contribute to the recent literature on the economic effects of those weather conditions that deviate from their regular seasonal pattern. To this end we use local temperature and snow measurements across Germany to analyze their impact on German monthly total industrial and...

Summary We show that under the alternative hypothesis the Hausman chi-square test statistic can be negative not only in small samples but even asymptotically. Therefore in large samples such a result is only compatible with the alternative and should be interpreted accordingly. Applying a known...

We investigate the controversial issue whether unemployment is related to productivity growth in the long run, using U.S. data in a framework of infrequent mean shifts. Tests find (endogenously dated) shifts around 1974, 1986, and 1996, system techniques indicate that the shifts are common...