Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate four possible asymmetries in US aggregate consumption and its major components (durables, non-durables, and services) for the period 1990-2013. Understanding the asymmetric behavior of the components is important since the impact of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to take a forecasting approach to examine the relationship between the US birth rate, marriage rate, and economic conditions (measured by both realized unemployment and expected unemployment). The expectation data come from the Michigan Surveys of...

Purpose – The random walk forecast of exchange rate serves as a standard benchmark for forecast comparison. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether this benchmark is unbiased and directionally accurate under symmetric loss. The focus is on the random walk forecasts of the dollar/euro...