We consider the forecasting of cointegrated variables, and we show that at long horizons" nothing is lost by ignoring cointegration when forecasts are evaluated using standard multivariate" forecast accuracy measures. In fact, simple univariate Box-Jenkins forecasts are just as accurate. " Our...

Monetary policymakers in advanced transition economies such as Poland are increasingly interested in how inflation responds to changes in policy instruments and other economic forces. In this paper, measures of underlying CPI inflation based upon optimal trimming concepts are developed. The...

When constructing hedged interest rate arbitrage portfolios for basket currencies, two issues arise: first, how are the unknown future basket weights optimally forecasted from past exchange rate data? And, second, how is risk—in terms of the conditional variance of expected profits from the...

There is ample empirical evidence for developed economies that asset prices contain information about future economic developments. But is this also the case in transition economies? Using a panel of monthly data for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Slovenia for the...

Prediction problems involving asymmetric loss functions arise routinely in many fields, yet the theory of optimal prediction under asymmetric loss is not well developed. We study the optimal prediction problem under general loss structures and characterize the optimal predictor. We compute the...

This paper reexamines growth in transition using panel data to 1997. It suggests that output has been strongly affected by export market growth; that inflation has been associated with weaker output only above a threshold inflation rate; that structural reform has been associated with weaker...

When were the significant turning points in business activity in the Nordic countries during the last fourty years? How frequent, long, and sharp were the contractions? This paper provides answers to these questions by applying the Bry and Boschan (1971) algorithms, which have been used to...

Value-at-Risk has emerged as the standard tool for measuring and reporting financial market risk. Currently, more than eighty commercial vendors offer enterprise or trading risk management systems that provide VAR-like measures. Risk managers are therefore often left with the daunting task of...

This paper reexamines growth in transition using panel data to 1997. It suggests that output has been strongly affected by export market growth; that inflation has been associated with weaker output only above a threshold inflation rate; that structural reform has been associated with weaker...