We construct a simple exchange economy overlapping generations model in which there are along with a public social security various private insurance schemes to explore fertility and the effects of various variables on it. In the private system parents can invest in children and benefit from...

Using information from a variety of sources, including our own estimates from quarterly data for each of the countries over the period 1972–1997, this paper suggests that the exchange rate will play an important role in the transmission of the impact of monetary policy through to the real...

This paper provides an answer to the question of how to improve the forecasting performance of a macro model to better account for economic developments and how to evaluate the forecasting uncertainty. The main tool in this assessment is stochastic simulation. Stochastic simulations in this...

This paper provides an empirical test for the hypothesis that suicides are related to economic determinants. More precisely a hypothesis is tested that changes in the suicide rate are determined by changes in the expected growth rate of income. This hypothesis is tested with an error-correction...

Purpose – To analyse productivity of public expenditures; especially to find out the effect of human capital investment on private sector productivity. Design/methodology/approach – Several measures of public sector capital stock are constructed. These measures are used in testing the...

This paper studies professional forecasts on a micro level using three alternative data sets. The analysis is mainly based on the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasts for the euro area, but for comparison, Consensus Economics survey and the Survey of Professional Forecasts for the US are also...

This paper evaluates the quality of survey forecasts, their accuracy and unbiasedness, and their overall consistency. The paper also tries to find out whether the relationships between economic variables are the same in survey data and in the actual data. In other words we analyze whether the...

We model banks’ loan losses with a panel of European countries for the period 1982–2012 using three country-specific macro variables: output growth shocks, real interest rates, and a measure of excessive private sector indebtedness. We find that a drop in output has an intensified impact on...

It is well-known that estimates of fiscal policy effects differ a lot. In this paper we try get some idea of the magnitude of these differences and the underlying reasons for these differences. In the European Monetary Union we face wide cross-country differences in fiscal institutions and key...