The paper constructs various core inflation measures. These include various trimmed means using highly disaggregated data and a structural VAR estimate of core inflation for Ireland. The ability of these core inflation measures to forecast future headline inflation is compared using a simple...

Core inflation rates are widely calculated. The perceived benefit of core inflation rates is that they help to inform monetary policy. This is achieved by uncovering the underlying trend in inflation or by helping to forecast inflation. Studies which compare core inflation rates frequently...

The paper presents a real time database of economic time series for Ireland. The database contains a record of what was considered official data at each point in time. The database is used to describe the properties of data revisions to the growth rates of GDP and its expenditure components in...

The substantial increase in oil prices over the past six or seven years has provoked considerable comment within the international media. While this increase has not had quite the same impact as that experienced in the 1970's, the magnitude of the price increases still has significant...

Ireland has no ability to affect the exchange rate through interest rates since the adoption of the euro. This paper provides a theoretically transparent method for analysing the impact of an exchange rate shock on employment and inflation in this context. The split between the tradable and...

This paper empirically tests whether Irish and UK petrol and diesel markets are characterised by asymmetric pricing behaviour. The econometric assessment uses threshold autoregressive models and a dataset of monthly refined oil and retail prices covering the period 1997 to mid-2009. A...

The recent financial crisis resulted in a steep contraction in the domestic economy together with a sharp decline in inflation. The Phillips curve model of inflation argues that inflation should be negatively related to economic performance and this would seem to be a potential explanatory...

The issue of forecast aggregation is to determine whether it is better to forecast a series directly or instead construct forecasts of its components and then sum these component forecasts. Notwithstanding some underlying theoretical results, it is gener- ally accepted that forecast aggregation...

This paper applies the Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012) methodology to assess spillovers in euro area sovereign bond markets. Our analysis identifies a number of phases of interaction in those markets in recent years. We find a substantial increase in spillover between euro area sovereign bond...

This paper carries out an empirical analysis of the sensitivity of the Irish economy to an unanticipated external demand shock using a Bayesian VAR model which includes a number of Irish macroeconomic variables such as GDP, unemployment and wages. A 1% increase in US GDP growth leads to an...