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DIW Discussion Papers 1066 / 2010
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 takes a fresh look on the survey data, which serve as a basis for the consumer confidence indicator (CCI) ...
2010| Christian Dreger, Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 1064 / 2010
This paper examines the forecasting performance of a broad monetary aggregate (M3) in predicting euro area inflation. Excess liquidity is measured as the difference between the actual money stock and its fundamental value, the latter determined by a money demand function. The out-of sample forecasting performance is compared to widely used alternatives, such as the term structure of interest rates. ...
2010| Christian Dreger, Jürgen Wolters
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DIW Discussion Papers 1036 / 2010
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 observed car prices can serve as a reasonably good proxy for income levels. In contrast to the traditional measures, ...
2010| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Boriss Siliverstovs
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DIW Discussion Papers 1029 / 2010
In this paper we model the volatility of the spread between the overnight interest rate and the central bank policy rate (the policy spread) for the euro area and the UK during the two main phases of the financial crisis that began in late 2007. During the crisis, the policy spread exhibited signs of volatility, owing to the breakdown in interbank market activity. The determinants of this volatility ...
2010| John Beirne, Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Nicola Spagnolo
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DIW Discussion Papers 1017 / 2010
This paper examines the long-run relationship between energy consumption and real GDP, including energy prices, for 25 OECD countries from 1981 to 2007. The distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long-run relationship. Indeed, cointegration ...
2010| Ansgar Belke, Christian Dreger, Frauke de Haan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1016 / 2010
This paper analyses the long-memory properties of high frequency financial time series. It focuses on temporal aggregation and the influence that this might have on the degree of dependence of the series. Fractional integration or I(d) models are estimated with a variety of specifications for the error term. In brief, we find evidence that a lower degree of integration is associated with lower data ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1009 / 2010
We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether "old" and "new" EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether "new" ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than "old" ones. We find that country-specific factors (in the form of heterogeneous intercepts) are a crucial determinant of ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Roman Matousek, Chris Stewart
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DIW Discussion Papers 1006 / 2010
This paper examines the degree of persistence in the volatility of financial time series using a Long Memory Stochastic Volatility (LMSV) model. Specifically, it employs a Gaussian semiparametric (or local Whittle) estimator of the memory parameter, based on the frequency domain, proposed by Robinson (1995a), and shown by Arteche (2004) to be consistent and asymptotically normal in the context of signal ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1004 / 2010
In this paper, we compare the distribution of price changes between collusive and noncollusive periods for ten major cartels. The first moments focus on previous research. We extend the discussion to the third (skewness) and fourth (kurtosis) moments. However, none of the above descriptive statistics can be considered as a robust test allowing a differentiation between competition and cartel. Therefore, ...
2010| Korbinian von Blanckenburg, Alexander Geist, Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 1002 / 2010
A strong private equity market is a cornerstone for commercialization and innovation in modern economies. However, substantial differences exist in the relative amounts raised and invested in private equity across European countries. We investigate the macro-determinants of private equity investment in Europe, focusing on the comparison between CEE and Western European countries. Our estimations are ...
2010| Kerstin Bernoth, Roberta Colavecchio, Magdolna Sass