The diversity of forecasts from macroeconomic models of the US economy

This paper investigates the accuracy and heterogeneity of output growth and inflation forecasts during the current and the four preceding NBER-dated US recessions. We generate forecasts from six different models of the US economy and compare them to professional forecasts from the Federal Reserve??s Greenbook and the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). The model parameters and model forecasts are derived from historical data vintages so as to ensure comparability to historical forecasts by professionals. The mean model forecast comes surprisingly close to the mean SPF and Greenbook forecasts in terms of accuracy even though the models only make use of a small number of data series. Model forecasts compare particularly well to professional forecasts at a horizon of three to four quarters and during recoveries. The extent of forecast heterogeneity is similar for model and professional forecasts but varies substantially over time. Thus, forecast heterogeneity constitutes a potentially important source of economic fluctuations. While the particular reasons for diversity in professional forecasts are not observable, the diversity in model forecasts can be traced to different modeling assumptions, information sets and parameter estimates.     

Obituary: Henri Theil, 1924–2000

This note contains a short biography of Professor Henri Theil and a brief sketch of his contributions to econometrics and related fields. Professor Theil is known as the author of the Principles of Econometrics , one of the most cited advanced textbooks of econometrics, and in particular made a large number of contributions including two and three stage least squares, the inequality coefficient, the Rotterdam model of consumer demand and the entropy based measure for income inequality.     

Common stochastic volatility trends in international stock returns

The aim of this work is to capture common stochastic trends in weekly volatilities of the Dow Jones, Nikkei, Hang Seng and Strait Times index using a multivariate stochastic volatility (SV) model. The results suggest a very high correlation among the volatility innovations, so that it is examined whether the four series share any common stochastic trends. A Principal Component Analysis and a Factor Analysis in the state space setting reveal that two common stochastic trends can be found to underlie the volatility series. The resulting linear combinations of the volatility series no more exhibit any stochastic trend but are stationary in the state space framework. Thus, it can be concluded that volatilities of the four stock indexes are in essence co-persistent.     

Actor and Institutional Dynamics in the Development of Multi-stakeholder Initiatives

As forms of private self-regulation, multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have emerged as an important empirical phenomenon in global governance processes. At the same time, MSIs are also theoretically intriguing because of their inherent double nature. On the one hand, MSIs spell out CSR standards that define norms for corporate behavior. On the other hand, MSIs are also the resultof corporate and stakeholder behavior. We combine the perspectives of institutional theory and club theory to conceptualize this double nature of MSIs. Based on a stage model that looks at the interplay of actor and institutional dynamics, we generate insights into why actors join a voluntary MSI, how the various motivations and intentions of the actors influence the standard development, and how these as well as the MSI design are subsequently influenced by both external (institutional) and internal (club) dynamics.     

The response of long-term interest rates to news about monetary policy actions: Empirical evidence for the U.S. and Germany

The Response of Long-Term Interest Rates to News about Monetary Policy Actions. Empirical Evidence for the U.S. and Germany. — The authors reestimate the expectations theory of the term structure focusing on the question of how monetary policy actions indicated by changes in the very short rate affect long-term interest rates. Their main point is that the expectations hypothesis implies that very long rates should only react to unanticipated changes of the very short rate. In contrast to cointegration tests of expectations theory, this implication only requires rational expectations but not stationary risk premia. Therefore, its empirical test sheds new light on the importance of expectations theory for the determinants of the term structure of interest rates.     

Factors of unsustainability: Identification,links and hierarchy

Although numerous, definitions of sustainable development remain vague or incomplete, living in an unsustainable world, it is more convenient to observe factors of unsustainability (FOUs) than to extrapolate to the conditions of sustainability. Furthermore, it would be more convenient to have a categorization of FOUs in order to correct them in a more direct way. To achieve this, the dynamics of FOUs have been studied within the scope of the business decision-making process, which can easily be extrapolated to other contexts. This analysis provides some recommendations with which to eliminate FOUs. The key points are cultural change by education, communication, continuous dialogue, learning and adaptation by the whole of society. Eliminating unsustainability does not always mean becoming sustainable. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.