We analyze four economic sentiment indicators for the German economy regarding their ability to forecast economic activity. Using cross correlations and Granger causality tests we find that the ifo business expectations (ifo), the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) and the ZEW Indicator of Economic...

This study focuses on the diversification benefits of the most developed equity markets of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). To evaluate these benefits of diversification we use so-called spanning tests based on a stochastic discount factor approach and estimated by General Methods of Moments...

Do financial market analysts use structural economic models when forecasting exchange rates? This is the leading question analysed in this paper. In contrast to other studies we use expectations data instead of observable variables. Therefore we analyse the implicit structural models forecasters...

In der vorliegenden Arbeit untersuchen wir die Eignung der ifo-Geschäftserwartungen und der ZEW-Konjunkturerwartungen als Frühindikatoren für die deutsche Industrieproduktion. Anhand von Granger-Kausalitätstests wird gezeigt, dass die auf Umfragen unter Finanzanalysten basierenden...

The picture of the securities exchanges and financial sectors in CEE countries is still relatively unfavorable. The CEE securities exchanges - with the only exception of the Warsaw Stock Exchange - are, in comparison with their western counterparts, underdeveloped and less important for the...

This paper attempts to assess the Europe-wide systemic risk in banking. We employ a bivariate GARCH model to estimate conditional correlations between European bank stock indices. These correlations are used as an indication for the interdependencies amongst the banking business in Europe and...