Tourist demand is subject to considerable variations, a fact which aggravates the development of forecast models of sufficiently adequate accuracy. This study develops models that permit including most if not all factors of influence. To this end, due consideration was given to calendar effects...

The paper describes a model for computing the trend output and the structural budget deficit in Austria. The calculation of trend output is based on a production function approach within a small macroeconomic model of the Austrian economy. A decomposition of public budgets into cyclical and...

This study evaluates the forecasting accuracy of five alternative econometric models in the context of predicting the quarterly international tourism demand in 25 countries or country groupings. Tourism demand is measured in terms of tourist expenditure by inbound international visitors in a...

For nowcasting and short-term forecasting of industrial production and GDP, business surveys are a vital source of information. They cover information of the recent past as well as developments in the near future. Whereas variations in industrial production indices potentially cover weather...

Forecasts from dynamic factor models potentially benefit from refining the data set by eliminating uninformative series. The paper proposes to use forecast weights as provided by the factor model itself for this purpose. Monte Carlo simulations and an empirical application to forecasting euro...

This paper describes the methodologies used for constructing a composite leading indicator for the Austrian economy (CLI-AT). First, a selection of those monthly indicators which overall fare best in showing a "steady" leading behaviour with respect to the Austrian business cycle was performed....

This paper compares the forecasting performance of three different econometric models for the Eurozone and the USA: a vector auto regression (VAR), a Bayesian vector auto regression (BVAR), and a structural vector error correction model (SVEC). The forecast evaluation is based on 19 vintages of...

This paper analyses the change in the Austrian business cycle over time using data back to 1954. The change in the cyclical pattern is captured using a nonlinear univariate structural time series model where the time of the break point is estimated. Results for GDP series suggest a break in the...

We combine self-collected historical data from 1867 to 1907 with CRSP data from 1926 to 2012, to examine the risk and return over the past 140 years of one of the most popular mechanical trading strategies - momentum. We find that momentum has earned abnormally high risk-adjusted returns - a...