This study utilizes the dynamic factor model of Giannone et al. (2008) in order to make now-/forecasts of GDP quarter-on-quarter growth rates in Switzerland. It also assesses the informational content of macroeconomic data releases for forecasting of the Swiss GDP. We find that the factor model...

We suggest to use information from the state register of personal cars as an alternative indicator of economic inequality in countries with a large share of shadow economy. We illustrate our approach using the Latvian pool of personal cars. Our main finding is that the extent of household...

In this paper, we evaluate the forecasting ability of 115 indicators to predict the housing prices and rents in 71 German cities. Above all, we are interested in whether the local business confidence indicators can allow substantially improving the forecasts, given the local nature of the...

This study develops a parsimonious stable coefficient money demand model for Latvia for the period from 1996 till 2005. A single cointegrating vector between the real money balances, the gross domestic product, the long-term interest rate, and the rate of inflation is found. Our study...

In Germany the foreign born population is made up of foreigners and so called ”ethnic Germans” who migrated from eastern European countries to Germany. While the first group is confronted with problems arising from the typical German concept of ethnicity and citizenship, the latter are...

In this study we have addressed the relationship between the stock market, the measure of real economic activity (represented by the real GDP), the economic sentiment indicator, and real interest rate for the five European countries: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. We find...

This study develops a parsimonious stable coefficient money demand model for Estonia for the period from 1995 till 2006. Using the Johansen Full Information Maximum Likelihood framework the two cointegrating vectors are found among the system variables including the real money balances, the...