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 paper analyzes the determinants of German exports to the euro area, which is by far the biggest market for German products. Four conditional error-correction models based on regionally disaggregated data are developed. One specification includes EMU industrial production and a real external...

We suggest a robust form of conditional moment test as a constructive test for functional misspecification in multiplicative error models. The proposed test has power solely against violations of the conditional mean restriction but is not affected by any other type of model misspecification....

This paper revisits the fractional co-integrating relationship between ex-ante implied volatility and ex-post realized volatility. Previous studies on stock index options have found biases and inefficiencies in implied volatility as a forecast of future volatility. It is argued that the concept...

The `saving for a rainy day' hypothesis implies that households' saving decisions reflect that they can (rationally) predict future income declines. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis plays a key role in discussions of fiscal policy multipliers and it holds under the null that the...

Recent empirical studies have found evidence of unstable long run money demand functions if recent data are used. If the link between money balances and the macroeconomy is fragile, the rationale of monetary aggregates in the ECB strategy has to be doubted. In contrast we present a "stable''...