The current economic crisis requires fast information to predict economic behavior early, which is difficult at times of structural changes. This paper suggests an innovative new method of using data on internet activity for that purpose. It demonstrates strong correlations between keyword...

The Google Insights data are a collection of recorded Internet searches for a huge number of the keywords, which are available since January 2004. These searches represent a kind of revealed perceptions of Internet users, which are a (possibly not entirely representative) sample of the general...

In this paper, we investigate whether the Google search activity can help in nowcasting the year-on-year growth rates of monthly US private consumption using a real-time data set. The Google-based forecasts are compared to those based on a benchmark AR(1) model and the models including the...

The standardisation of the European systems of national accounts has progressed significantly in recent years. Some room for interpretation remains in regard to some accounting standards, the periodicity of the data, and the quality of the forecasts of budget deficits. Yet national accounts data...

A new method for constructing R&D capital stocks is proposed. Following Schumpeter, the development of R&D capital stocks is modelled as a process of creative destruction. Newly generated knowledge is assumed not only to add to the existing R&D capital stocks but also, by displacing old...

Typically, laboratory experiments suffer from homogeneous subject pools and self-selection biases. The usefulness of survey data is limited by measurement error and by the questionability of their behavioral relevance. Here we present a method integrating interactive experiments and...

This study examines whether central banks can combat inflation that is caused by rising energy prices. By using a high-frequency event study and a Structural Vector Autoregression, we find evidence that the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve (Fed) are capable of doing so by...

This paper focuses on decentralized energy in Germany and how households' environmental behavior in terms of energy consumption is shaped in these contexts. It sets out to gain a more precise understanding of whether decentralized energy initiatives are a good tool to promote the adoption of...

This paper analyses macroeconomic and financial determinants of bad loans applying a SVAR approach to investigate whether excessive loans granted during expansionary phases can explain the more than proportional increase in non-performing loans during contractionary periods. The results indicate...

This paper first shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the European Central Bank (ECB) can influence global energy prices. Second, through Lucas critique-robust counterfactual analysis, we uncover that the ECB's ability to affect fast-moving energy prices plays an important role in the...