It is investigated whether euro area variables can be forecast better based on synthetic time series for the pre-euro period or by using just data from Germany for the pre-euro period. Our forecast comparison is based on quarterly data for the period 1970Q1-2003Q4 for 10 macroeconomic variables....

The objective of this study is to compare alternative computerized model-selection strategies in the context of the vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling framework. The focus is on a comparison of subset modeling strategies with the general-to-specific reduction approach automated by PcGets....

Alternative modeling strategies for specifying subset VAR models are considered. It is shown that under certain conditions a testing procedure based on t-ratios is equivalent to sequentially eliminating lags that lead to the largest improvement in a prespecified model selection criterion. A...

Many contemporaneously aggregated variables have stochastic aggregation weights. We compare different forecasts for such variables, including univariate forecasts of the aggregate, a multivariate forecast of the aggregate that uses information from the disaggregated components, a forecast which...

Previous euro area money demand studies have used aggregated national time series data from the countries participating in the European Monetary Union (EMU). However, aggregation may be problematic because macroeconomic convergence processes have taken place in the countries of interest....

Johansen's reduced-rank maximum likelihood (ML) estimator for cointegration parameters in vector error correction models is known to produce occasional extreme outliers. Using a small monetary system and German data we illustrate the practical importance of this problem. We also consider an...