We re-visit a puzzling result that in U.S. post-WW II data the dividend price ratio can predict aggregate returns but not dividend growth. We find that predictive regressions are sensitive to the method used to aggregate firm-level data. Using value weighted firm-level data we find strong...

There is a generalized conviction that variation in dividend yields is exclusively related to expected returns and not to expected dividend growth - e.g. Cochrane's presidential address (Cochrane (2011)). We show that this pattern, although valid for the aggregate stock market, is not true for...

We examine the predictive ability of the aggregate earnings yield for market returns and earnings growth by estimating variance decompositions at multiple horizons. Based on weighted long-horizon regressions, we find that most of the variation in the earnings yield is due to return...

We compare the stock return forecasting performance of alternative payout yields. The net payout yield produces more accurate forecasts relative to alternatives, including the traditional dividend yield. This remains true even after excluding several years during the Great Depression when...

This contribution investigates the business cycles of Switzerland compared to its five neighboring countries Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Liechtenstein. In contrast to the widespread notion of small countries "importing" the business cycle from bigger neighbors, it is shown that the real...

Economic behavior as well as economic resources of individuals vary with age. Swedish time series show that the age structure of the population contains information correlated to medium-term trends in growth, inflation and other macroeconomic data. GDP gaps estimated by age structure regressions...

Simulated test marketing (STM) is a quantitative technique used to forecast new product sales, one of the most validated tools in all marketing research. Forecasting awareness is an important stage in that process, one critical to STM performance. Awareness models incorporated into popular STMs...

In economics, common factors are often assumed to underlie the co-movements of a set of macroeconomic variables. For this reason, many authors have used estimated factors in the construction of prediction models. In this paper, we begin by surveying the extant literature on diffusion indexes. We...

Two new predictive screening tools that are based on analyzing records of over one-million people who experienced homelessness have been placed in the public domain by the Economic Roundtable. The two groups targeted by these tools are low-wage workers who have just lost their jobs and youth...

We develop a method for constructing prediction intervals for a nonstationary variable, such as GDP. The method uses a factor augmented regression [FAR] model. The predictors in the model includes a small number of factors generated to extract most of the information in a set of panel data on a...