Certainly the current crisis is affecting seriously the convergence process in EU. Starting from the spatial distribution in EU of some fundamental development indicators before the current crisis, we try to estimate the impact of the prolonged crisis. During last years, the less developed...

In a panel of West African countries, we investigate whether data on immigrant remittance flows can be used to improve on predictive accuracy of aggregate demand in a systematic way. The results of the prediction experiments are compared to traditional significance tests of asymmetric error...

This paper compares the predictive ability of the factor models of Stock and Watson (2002) and Forni, Hallin, Lippi, and Reichlin (2005) using a "large" panel of US macroeconomic variables. We propose a nesting procedure of comparison that clarifies and partially overturns the results of similar...

We adopt a series of shrinkage and factor analytic methodologies to compute nowcasts of the main Finnish turnover indexes, using continuously accumulating firm-level data. We show that the estimates based on large dimensional models provide an accurate and timelier alternative to the ones...

Die Arbeitslosigkeit für die 176 deutschen administrativen Arbeitsmarktregionen (im Allgemeinen Arbeitsagenturbezirke) wird auf einer monatlichen Basis prognostiziert. Wegen ihrer geringen Größe existieren zwischen diesen regionalen Einheiten starke räumliche Interdependenzen. Um diese und...

This article examines the spatially varying effect of age on single-family house (SFH) prices. Age has been shown to be a key driver for house depreciation and is usually associated with a negative price effect. In practice, however, there exist deviations from this behavior which are referred...

Social protection systems use a range of entitlement criteria. First-tier support typically requires contributions or past employment in many countries, while safety net benefits are granted on the basis of need. In a context of volatile and uncertain labour markets, careful and continuous...

Using data for the Ukrainian economy, we applied and adapted the growth-at-risk (GaR) framework to examine the association between financial conditions, credit and sectors' activity, and external conditions and the probability distribution of GDP growth in Ukraine. We applied CSA and PCA...

This paper proposes a general statistical framework for systemic financial stress indexes. Several existing index designs can be represented as special cases. We introduce a daily variant of the ECB's CISS for the euro area and the US. The CISS aggregates a representative set of stress...

Many poor countries are now discovering valuable non-renewable natural resources. Unlike most other sources of tax revenue, the government revenues from the depletion of these resources are both unsustainable and volatile. Each of these features implies that the savings rate appropriate for...