This paper contains estimates of physical and intangible (information technology, advertising and training) capital stock, together with capital, labor and externally provided input services, of Spanish commercial and saving banks in the period 1983 to 2003. Capital stocks are valued at...

This paper shows that liquidity constraints restrict job creation even when labor markets are flexible. In a dynamic model of labor demand, I show that in an environment of imperfect capital and imperfect labor markets, firms use temporary contracts to relax financial constraints. Evidence for...

This paper investigates the empirical determinants of corporate cash holdings in the euro area as a function of firm size. The results show that there are significant differences in investment in liquid assets for firms of different size. More specifically, liquid assets for smaller firms in the...

We develop a dynamic factor model to compute short term forecasts of the Spanish GDP growth in real time. With this model, we compute a business cycle index which works well as an indicator of the business cycle conditions in Spain. To examine its real time forecasting accuracy, we use real-time...

We present evidence about the loss of the so-called "plucking effect", that is, a high-growth phase of the cycle typically observed at the end of recessions. This result matches the belief, presented informally by different authors, that recession may have now permanent effects, or recession...

We propose a Markov-switching dynamic factor model to construct an index of global business cycle conditions, for performing short-term forecasts of quarterly world GDP growth in real time and computing real-time business cycle probabilities. To overcome the real-time forecasting challenges, the...

We examine the finite-sample performance of small versus large scale dynamic factor models. Our Monte Carlo analysis reveals that small scale factor models out-perform large scale models in factor estimation and forecasting for high levels of cross-correlation across the idiosyncratic errors of...

In this paper we propose a new real-time forecasting model for euro area GDP growth, D€STINY, which attempts to bridge the existing gap in the literature between large- and small-scale dynamic factor models. By adopting a disaggregated modelling approach, D€STINY uses most of the information...

Much has been written about why economists failed to predict the latest financial and real crisis. Reading the recent literature, it seems that the crisis was so obvious that economists must have been blind when looking at data not to see it coming. In this paper, we analyze whether such claims...

Practitioners do not always use research findings, as the research is not always conducted in a manner relevant to real-world practice. This survey seeks to close the gap between research and practice in respect of short-term forecasting in real time. To this end, we review the most relevant...