Index tracking requires building a portfolio of stocks (a replica) whose behaviour is as close as possible to that of a given stock index. Typically, much fewer stocks should appear in the replica than in the index, and there should be no low frequency (persistent) components in the tracking...

‘Iterated’ multiperiod ahead time series forecasts are made using a one-period ahead model, iterated forward for the desired number of periods, whereas ‘direct’ forecasts are made using a horizon-specific estimated model, where the dependent variable is the multi-period ahead value being...

There is a wide literature on the dynamic adjustment of employment and its relationship with the business cycle. In this paper we present a statistical model that offers a congruent representation of part of the UK labour market since the mid 1960s. We use a cointegrated vector autoregressive...

We investigate co-movements and heterogeneity in inflation dynamics of different regions within and across euro area countries using a novel disaggregate dataset to improve the understanding of inflation differentials in the European Monetary Union. We employ a model where regional inflation...

The estimation of dynamic factor models for large sets of variables has attracted considerable attention recently, due to the increased availability of large datasets. In this paper we propose a new parametric methodology for estimating factors from large datasets based on state space models and...

The estimation of structural dynamic factor models (DFMs) for large sets of variables is attracting considerable attention. In this paper we briefly review the underlying theory and then compare the impulse response functions resulting from two alternative estimation methods for the DFM....

Models based on economic theory have serious problems at forecasting exchange rates better than simple univariate driftless random walk models, especially at short horizons. Multivariate time series models suffer from the same problem. In this paper, we propose to forecast exchange rates with a...

We analyse the evolution of the business cycle in the accession countries, after a careful examination of the seasonal properties of the available series and the required modification of the cycle dating procedures. We then focus on the degree of cyclical concordance within the group of...