In this paper, we investigate whether the Google search activity can help in nowcasting the year-on-year growth rates of monthly US private consumption using a real-time data set. The Google-based forecasts are compared to those based on a benchmark AR(1) model and the models including the...

In this study, we suggest an explanation for the low growth rates of real housing prices in Canada and Germany in comparison to other OECD countries over the period 1975–2005. We show that the long-run development of housing markets is determined by real disposable percapita income, the real...

Von Kritikern der Europäischen Währungsunion wird oft behauptet, die realwirtschaftliche Entwicklung in den einzelnen Regionen sei zu unterschiedlich, als dass eine einheitliche Geldpolitik effizient sein könne. Wie berechtigt solche Befürchtungen sind, lässt sich durch einen Vergleich des...

We use a neoclassical production function to analyze the effects of knowledge spillovers via entrepreneurship on economic performance of 337 German districts. To take the spatial dependence structure of the data into account, we estimate a spatial Durbin model. We highlight the importance of the...

We suggest to use Internet car sale price advertisements for measuring economic inequality between and within German regions. Our estimates of regional income levels and Gini indices based on advertisements are highly, positively correlated with the official figures. This implies that the...

The paper evaluates the quality of the German national accounting data (GDP and its useside components) as measured by the magnitude and dispersion of the forecast / revision errors. It is demonstrated that government consumption series are the least reliable, whereas real GDP and real private...

Survey-based indicators such as the consumer confidence are widely seen as leading indicators for economic activity, especially for the future path of private consumption. Although they receive high attention in the media, their forecasting power appears to be very limited. Therefore, this paper...

In this paper, we examine beta-convergence of real per-capita income of Chinese counties. We account for both the spatial dependences between counties and the possibility of different convergence regimes. The first feature is captured by the spatial error term, whereas the second one is modeled...

In this paper, the extent of the shadow economy in OECD countries is investigated. The estimates of the size of the shadow economy are obtained using the panel-data techniques applied to the data on 38 OECD member states over the period 1991-2007. Our estimates tend to be somewhat lower than the...

This paper sets up a common unobserved factor model with smooth transition autoregressive dynamics. This model is compared to the already classical common factor model with regime-switching. Both models' in-sample and out-of-sample performance in terms of capturing and predicting the business...