Modeling the European cycle with factor structure and regime switching

This paper compares the stylized facts of the European growth cycle stemming from the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the European Monetary Union with an unobserved common factor derived from a dynamic factor model with regime switching. The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence about the most adequate indicator for short-term monitoring of the cyclical state of the European economy. Previous versions of this article have been presented at the 55th International Atlantic Economic Conference (Vienna, Austria, March 12–16, 2003) and at the VI Encuentro de Economía Aplicada (Granada, Spain, June 5–7, 2003). The author would like to thank the conference participants and an anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions.     

Estimating potential output and the output gap for the euro area: a model-based production function approach

This paper provides an analysis of multivariate unobserved components models for the estimation of potential output and the output gap in the euro area. Bivariate models of output and inflation and multivariate model-based implementations of the production function approach are considered; according to the latter potential output is derived from the permanent components of the factors of production consistent with stable inflation, whereas the output gap results from the combination of the transitory components. This approach allows to measure the contribution of the various factors of production to potential output growth, and to assess the reliability of the output gap estimates. Various alternative statistical specifications for the separation of trend and cycle are considered entertaining different economic hypotheses. The paper also provides an assessment of the reliability of the alternative output gap estimates and analyses their predictive validity by means of a rolling forecast exercise that provides an evaluation of the capability to forecast future inflation. A preliminary version of this paper appeared as EUI working paper ECO2002/09 and was presented at the European Central Bank, the European University Institute, the Growth and Business Cycles in Theory and Practice conference, Manchester UK, 20–21 June 2002, the Common Features in Rio conference, Rio de Janeiro, 29–31 July 2002. We thank the participants, Michael Artis, Gerard Korteweg, Geoff Kenny, Neale Kennedy, Manuel da Mota Freitas Martins, Gerard Ruenstler, and three anonymous Referees for useful discussions and valuable comments. The paper was largely written while the first author was acting as consultant for the ECB. The views expressed in it do not necessarily reflect those of the ECB. All correspondence to Alberto Musso.     

The role of conference externalities and other factors in determining the annual recruiting rankings of football bowl subdivision (FBS) teams

In this article, we analyse the impact of school, head coach and conference characteristics on a college football team’s annual recruiting ranking. Utilizing panel data collected from various sources covering 2002–2014, we find that measures of recent school success such as having winning seasons and finishing seasons ranked in the Associated Press (AP) top 25 poll have a positive impact on a team’s recruiting ranking. Similarly, schools with more successful head coaches tend to earn better recruiting classes, while schools facing bowl bans, scholarship restrictions and probation tend to earn worse recruiting classes. Various measures of conference achievement indicate that conference externalities in recruiting may indeed be positive as is often suggested; however, there is much potential for a negative externality as well.     

Incentive and informational properties of preference questions

Surveys are frequently used by businesses and governments to elicit information about the public’s preferences. They have become the most common way to gather preference information regarding goods, that are not (or are not yet) bought or sold in markets. In this paper we apply the standard neoclassical economic framework to generate predictions about how rational agents would answer such survey questions, which in turn implies how such survey data should be interpreted. In some situations, the standard economic model would be expected to have no predictive power. For situations where it does have predictive power, we compare different survey formats with respect to: (a) the information that the question itself reveals to the respondent, (b) the strategic incentives the respondent faces in answering the question, and (c) the information revealed by the respondent’s answer. Earlier versions of this paper have been presented as a plenary address to the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economics in Oslo, as an invited paper at the Japanese Forum on Environmental Valuation meeting in Kobe, and at a NOAA conference on stated preference methods.     

A disaggregated analysis of EU imports: the implications for the study of patterns of trade and technology

This paper examines trends in the unit prices of manufacturedimports into the European Union (EU) in the period 1988–2002.This is undertaken at a high level of disaggregation, and itis this decomposition which we believe has important implicationsboth for a range of bodies of economic analysis and for policy.The analyses undertaken in this paper confirm that disaggregationmatters in helping to identify unit-price trends. We have alsoshown that unit-price trends vary with the type of economy exportinginto Europe and the type of product being exported, and thatthese results are robust at high levels of disaggregation.     

Market efficiency broadcasted live: ECB code words and euro exchange rates

This paper examines the impact of the European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy on euro exchange rate returns using an event study with intraday data for five currencies (the euro exchange rate versus the US dollar, the British pound, the Canadian dollar, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen). I construct two indicators of news about monetary policy stemming separately from policy decisions and the press conference. Estimation results show that the surprise component of communication has highly statistically significant effects on exchange rates, whereas the response of euro exchange rates to the unanticipated change in the policy rate is more muted. I also estimate the financial market impact on euro exchange rates of US, European and German macroeconomic news, and I show that the impact of the ECB press conference is economically important. The process of fully incorporating the ECB news shock takes about 1 h, and thus this result suggests that the whole press conference (both the Introductory Statement and the Q&A part) provides valuable information to market participants.     

Addiction and interaction between alcohol and tobacco consumption

This paper adopts a multi-commodity habit formation model to study whether unhealthy behaviors are related, i.e. whether there are contemporaneous and inter-temporal complementarities between alcohol and tobacco consumptions in Italy. To this aim time series data of per-capita expenditures and prices during the period 1960 to 2002 are used. Own price elasticities are negative and tobacco appears to be more responsive than alcohol demand, although both responses are less than unity. Cross price elasticities are also negative and asymmetric thus suggesting complementarity. A “double dividend” could then be exploited, because public policy needs to tackle the consumption of only one good to control the demand of both. These results show that the optimal strategy for maximizing public revenues would be to raise alcohol taxation more than tobacco taxation. Finally, past consumption of one addictive good does not significantly reinforce current consumption of the other. We thank participants to the Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics, Verona June 2006; the 61st European Meeting of the Econometric Society, Vienna August 2006, and participants of the conference “Individual and Collective Choices in Health Protection”, Genoa November 2005 for helpful comments. We would also like to thank, without implicating, Pier Luigi Rizzi and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Financial support from the University of Siena, PAR grant (Atheneum Research Grant), is gratefully acknowledged.     

The dark side of the black gold shock onto Europe: One stock's joy is another stock's sorrow

This paper examines the impact of the current oil prices fall on Europe. We estimate a Bayesian shrinkage VAR model and analyse the impulse response functions to investigate the reaction of European stock markets to the current oil prices collapse. Using data covering the March 2002 to May 2014 period, our main result is that European stock markets are negatively and significantly affected by the crude oil shock. We prove that this result is robust to reasonable changes in the Bayesian shrinkage VAR model of the variables order and inclusion of additional variables. The findings shed light that common features exist among the European stock markets. Furthermore, the results highlight that the most exposed stock market is the French one, and that the least affected market is the Austrian one.     

Real Wage and Nominal Shock: Evidence from Pacific-Rim Countries

This paper examines aggregate real-wage responses to nominal shocks in four Pacific-rim countries utilizing a vector autoregression (VAR) framework. In this study, positive real-wage responses are found in Japan and New Zealand whereas negative responses are found in Australia and Korea. In the transmission of nominal shocks to real economic activities, the findings show a sticky-price model to be more important in Japan and New Zealand, while a sticky-wage model plays the more dominant role in Australia and Korea.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 54th International Atlantic Economic Conference in Washington, D.C., October 10–13, 2002. The author would like to thank the conference participants and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are attributed to the author.     

Transmission of the 2007–2008 financial crisis in advanced countries of the European Union

The aim of this paper is to identify the main factors responsible for the 2007–2008 crisis development and transmission across the 10 developed European Union (EU) countries. In order to achieve this objective, trade and financial linkages, crisis contagion from the United States and EU countries and countries' internal and external economic vulnerabilities are examined. The results of logistic regression model covering the period from 2002 to 2012 presented in this paper indicate that the transmission of the crisis occurred through contagion from the United States but also from other EU countries. Additionally, the empirical results confirm that high inflation, a decrease in the exchange rate, and a decrease in the US long-term interest rates increased the probability of the 2007–2008 financial crisis.     

New technologies and productivity growth in the euro area

This paper provides an overview of the available evidence on the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) for developments in average labour productivity (ALP) growth in the euro area. The contribution of ICT to ALP growth is found to have increased both in terms of production and investment over the 1990s (up to 2001). However, there is no evidence of significant positive spillover effects from the use of ICT on ALP growth. This implies that there is no reason to believe that potential output growth in the euro area has increased significantly in recent years on account of new technologies. Comparing developments in the euro area and the United States, it appears, however, that ICT capital cannot account for much of the difference in ALP developments over the 1990s. This suggests that cyclical developments and, in particular, the structure of the economy are more important for explaining the difference in performance.First version received: March 2002/Final version received: May 2003We thank Bart van Ark, Neale Kennedy, Gerard Korteweg, Ad van Riet, Marcel Timmer, two anonymous referees and participants at the 17th Congress of the European Economic Association, Venice August 2002 for their comments. All errors and omissions remain ours, of course. We thank Erikos Velissaratos for his help in acquiring data on investment in ICT and Colin Webb for providing us with the OECD STAN database. This paper represents the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Central Bank, the European Commission or their staff.     

Long run money demand in the EU: Evidence for area-wide aggregates

Long-run properties of EU-wide money aggregates are analysed. For each of the three aggregates considered-Currency, M1 and M3H-it is possible to obtain cointegrating relationships with GDP and interest rates (long or short term market interest rates). Results are not improved when traditional aggregates, obtained by aggregating existing national aggregates, are extended by the inclusion of various measures of Cross-Border Holdings. Specific attention is also paid to aggregation issues and the relative performance of area-wide and national equations. The results show that aggregation bias is not a major problem and that the relatively good area-wide performance is largely a consequence of a statistical averaging effect.gf.gfagan.hg.eunet.deBoth authors are in the Stage Three Division of the Monetary, Economics and Statistics Department of the European Monetary Institute. The authors would like to thank colleagues at the EMI and participants at an EMI conference on EU money demand, held in 1995, for helpful comments and suggestions. Comments received from participants in the 1997 Econometric Society European Meeting and in the Workshop on Money Demand at Berlin Humboldt Universität in 1997 are also gratefully acknowledged. The final version benefited from comments by the editors and two anonymous referees. Opinions expressed in the paper are only those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the EMI.     

Deregulation and Productivity: The Case of Spanish Banks

This paper deals with measuring total factor productivity (TFP) growth of financial institutions incorporating different types of deregulatory measures. TFP growth is decomposed into external, scale, and markup components. The external component is further dissected into deregulation and technical change components. The TFP growth relationship is included as an additional equation in estimating the cost system. The empirical model uses panel data on Spanish banks (savings and commercial banks). We find that deregulations contributed positively to TFP growth for both savings and commercial banks. Furthermore, domestic (European) deregulations had a greater effect on TFP growth of savings (commercial) banks. JEL Classification: D24, D40, G21Lozano-Vivas acknowledges financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and FEDER grant n° BEC2002-02852. The authors thank an anonymous referee, the editor of the JRE and seminar participants at the XI International Tor Vergata Conference on Banking and Finance: Monetary Integration, Markets and Regulation (Rome, Italy) and at the Asian Pacific Productivity and Efficiency Conference (Taipei, Taiwan) for numerous suggestions. A previous version of this paper was distributed as working paper E2004/24, CentrA.     

A revisionist perspective of European research in economics

The study by Kalaitzidakis et al. (Eur. Econom. Rev. 113 (1999a) 1150-1168, hereafter KMS) continues to exert significant influence on the literature that evaluates the relative publication performance of European centres of research in economics. The current paper argues that the methodology employed by KMS is deficient, and that it is not the methodology these authors intended to employ. I utilise an improved approach to revise the original rankings that relied on publication output from 1991 to 1996, and to update the relevant findings using 1997-2002 data. The revised rankings differ greatly from those reported by KMS. The results also suggest that there have been dramatic shifts in the relative ranking of the various European institutions over time. As expected, rankings are sensitive to the choice of journals considered. However, ranking sensitivity is considerably more pronounced with respect to changes in individual performance over time, than to the group of journals used to measure performance.     

Forecasting industrial production and the early detection of turning points

In this paper we propose a simple model to forecast industrial production in Italy up to 6 months ahead. We show that the forecasts produced using the model outperform some popular forecasts as well as those stemming from an ARIMA model used as a benchmark and those from some single equation alternative models. We show how the use of these forecasts can improve the estimate of a cyclical indicator and the early detection of turning points for the manufacturing sector. This is of paramount importance for short-term economic analysis.The first draft of this paper was mostly prepared while Claudio Lupi was working as a Research Director at ISAE. The present version of the paper is a revision of a preliminary draft that was circulated under the same title as ISAE working paper 20/01. The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees, audiences at ISAE, Dublin (22nd International Symposium on Forecasting), and Ente Einaudi (econometrics seminars) for comments. Fruitful discussions and suggestions from Gianluca Cubadda, Sergio de Nardis, John FitzGerald, Antonio García-Ferrer, Franco Peracchi, and Tommaso Proietti are gratefully acknowledged. None of them is responsible for any remaining error. The opinions expressed in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of ISAE or its staff.First revision received: Ocotber 2002/Final revision received: May 2003     

The power of tests for equivalent ARMA models: The implications for practitioners

Analysts frequently find it convenient to use the same ARMA model to make forecasts for multiple time series. The trick is to know when it is safe to assume that multiple series are generated by the same underlying process. Although several authors have developed statistical procedures for testing whether two models are equivalent, no one has shown how to determine the power of these tests. This paper shows how to determine the power of the most general test for equivalent ARMA models. It also shows how to quantify the effect of model misspecification errors on the accuracy of the forecast. An illustrative example and flowchart are then used to show how calculating the power of the test can enable the practitioner to safeguard against a serious degradation in the accuracy of the forecast.Jel classification: C12, C22, C53First version received: March 2002/Final version received: December 2002     

Going out of the Great Recession? Contrast between the United States and Europe: Proposed work from economic history, 1960–2014

In recent work, the authors have proposed to the United States a model that explains the trend behavior of the rate of profit from share surplus, capital productivity, and the coefficient of financialization. The main results of the explanatory model allow the authors to affirm that with the change of control of Keynesianism to neoliberalism since 1980, there has been a substantial fall in the profit rate to half the values achieved in the years of Keynesian regulation (1945–1973). This significant fall in the level of benefits is due to a substantial fall in capital productivity. The authors are currently working on adapting the explanatory model for the U.S. economy to the main countries of the European Union (Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, and Spain). The results show that the pattern of behavior of the variables described in the reference country—the world capitalist economic system, the United States—is repeated more or less precisely in the main countries of the European Union; Germany, France, Italy, United Kingdom, and Spain.     

Modeling Cyclical Asymmetries in European Imports

This paper applies smooth transition models to capture the nonlinear behavior in the imports data of six major European economies and to assess whether such nonlinearities are related to business cycle asymmetries. Two classes of switch between regimes are considered: endogenously determined transition that assumes nonlinearities are generated by idiosyncratic components specific to foreign trade, and exogenous transition based on GDP growth as a more direct indicator of the cyclical state of the economy. The results support the proposition that the dynamics of imports are nonlinear. In Belgium, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, regimes change over the business cycle, while in Germany and Italy the switch between regimes is endogenous. National characteristics play a role in defining the position of extreme regimes, the smoothness of the transition, and local dynamics within each state.Previous versions of this article have been presented at the 57th International Atlantic Economic Conference (Lisbon, Portugal, March 10–14, 2004) and at the VII Encuentro de Economía Aplicada (Vigo, Spain, June 3–5, 2004). The authors thank the conference participants and an anonymous referee for their comments.     

Spanish regional policy: Economic and social cohesion in the European union

The aim of this paper is to analyze the economic and social cohesion from the Spanish perspective. The hypothesis is that the economic and social cohesion in the European Union needs three requirements. First, the Structural Funds, European Regional Development Fund, European Social Fund and European Agricultural Guide, and Guarantee Fund, increase their weight in the community budget. Second, the resources of those funds must be concentrated on the lesser developed regions. Third, each region assigns its resources to the improvement of the factors that contribute to its backwardness (quality of human capital, innovation, development, and managerial initiative). The analysis is based on the first and second Community Support Framework [CSF 1989–93 and CSF 1994–99].An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fifty-Third International Atlantic Economic Conference, March 13–17, 2002, Paris, France.     

Alterations in export patterns through transforming policies in Romania

This study examines Romanian export flows in light of the dismantling of the traditional economic ties within the former Eastern European trading bloc (the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) and the conclusion (in 1993) of the Association Agreement between Romania and the European Union. These have led to a significant adjustment of the geographic trade pattern for Romania. The structural gravity model was employed to analyze the evolution of Romanian export flows to the two groups of main trading partners, i.e., the European nations of the former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the European Union. The empirical results support the view that the European Union became and will remain the major market outlet for Romanian exports in the following years.The authors are indebted to the participants of the 41st Atlantic Economic Conference for their helpful comments and suggestions on a first draft of this paper.