Human capital is a driving factor of innovation and economic growth. Economic prospects of cities depend on high qualified workers' knowledge and therefore, attracting highly qualified workers plays a fundamental role for cities' prospects. This study contributes to the question which factors...

Although many macroeconomic time series are assumed to follow nonlinear processes, nonlinear models often do not provide better predictions than their linear counterparts. Furthermore, such models easily become very complex and difficult to estimate. The aim of this study is to investigate...

This study explores the dynamics of monthly metal prices during the past 100 years. On the basis of a unique data set, co-movement, price cycles and long-run trends are analyzed by means of common statistical methods and the results are compared to the findings in the literature. Due to its...

In this paper we model the dynamics of 100 years long monthly price series of eight non-ferrous and precious metals. Applying the state space framework we impose and identify two common factors related to non-ferrous and precious metals, respectively, which exhibit quite distinct autoregressive...

This study focuses on the question whether nonlinear transformation of lagged time series values and residuals are able to systematically improve the average forecasting performance of simple Autoregressive models. Furthermore it investigates the potential superior forecasting results of a...

We investigate the regional disparities in high-skilled foreign employment in Germany. The importance of different factors which attract highly qualified migrants to specific regions and the role of labour-migration policy is analysed. Our results show that labour-market variables as well as the...