This paper deals with the determinants of agents’ acquisition of information. Our econometric evidence shows that the general index of Italian share-prices and the series of Italy’s financial newspaper sales are cointegrated, and the former series Granger-causes the latter, thereby giving...

In structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models identifying restrictions for shocks and impulse responses are usually derived from economic theory or institutional constraints. Sometimes the restrictions are insufficient for identifying all shocks and impulse responses. In this paper it is...

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....

The role of expectations for economic fluctuations has received considerable attention in recent business cycle analysis. We exploit Markov regime switching models to identify shocks in cointegrated structural vector autoregressions and investigate different identification schemes for bivariate...

In testing for the cointegrating rank of a vector autoregressive (VAR) process it is important to take into account level shifts that have occurred in the sample period. Therefore the properties of estimators of the time period where a shift has taken place are investigated. The possible...

When applying Johansen's procedure for determining the cointegrating rank to systems of variables with linear deterministic trends, there are two possible tests to choose from. One test allows for a trend in the cointegration relations and the other one restricts the trend to be orthogonal to...

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...