We investigate changes in the time series characteristics of postwar U.S. inflation. In a model-based analysis the conditional mean of inflation is specified by a long memory autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average process and the conditional variance is modelled by a stochastic...

In non-experimental sciences the errors associated with model misspecifications in primarystudies carry over to meta-analysis. We use Monte Carlo simulations to analyse the effects ofthese misspecifications on results of a meta-analysis using a meta-estimator that calculates asimple average...

This paper assesses the performance of a number of long-term interest rate forecast approaches, namely time series models, structural economic models, expert forecasts and combinations thereof. The predictive performance of these approaches is compared using out of sample forecast errors, where...

<b>Purpose:</b><br>This paper addresses the nature, formalization, and neural bases of (affective) social ties anddiscusses the relevance of ties for health economics. A social tie is defined as an affectiveweight attached by an individual to the well-being of another individual ('utilityinterdependence')....

A Bayesian model averaging procedure is presented that makes use of a finite mixture of many model structures within the class of vector autoregressive (VAR) processes. It is applied to two empirical issues. First, stability of the Great Ratios in U.S. macro-economic time series is investigated,...

Using a Bayesian framework this paper provides a multivariate combination approach to prediction based on a distributional state space representation of predictive densities from alternative models. In the proposed approach the model set can be incomplete. Several multivariate time-varying...

As both the natural level of output and the New Keynesian output gap cannot be observed in practice, there is quite some debate on the question how these variables look like in practice. Rather than taking the standard approach of using a time trend or the HP-filter to obtain estimates of these...

Regression analyses of cross-country economic growth data are complicated by two main forms of model uncertainty: the uncertainty in selecting explanatory variables and the uncertainty in specifying the functional form of the regression function. Most discussions in the literature address these...

We introduce a statistical test for comparing the predictive accuracy of competing copula specifications in multivariate density forecasts, based on the Kullback-Leibler Information Criterion (KLIC). The test is valid under general conditions: in particular it allows for parameter estimation...

Exchange market pressure (EMP) measures the pressure on a currencyto depreciate. It adds to the actual depreciation a weightedcombination of policy instruments used to ward off depreciation,such as interest rates and foreign exchange interventions, where theweights are their effectiveness. The...