This paper investigates the Euro-area business cycle using a multivariate autoregressive time series model with cointegration. The cointegration restrictions help to identify permanent and transitory shocks which form the stochastic part of trend and cyclical GDP, respectively. The identification allows for a historical decomposition of Euro-area GDP into trend and cycle. Further, the relative importance ...
"[...] in many situations a decision does not have to be made immediately, but can be delayed until additional information has been acquired. Sequential analysis seems particularly applicable to the problem of predicting turning points in the business cycle" (Palash and Radecki, 1985). Elaborating on this idea, we propose a new approach to predict cyclical turning points in the Euro-zone using the ...
Most of the Euro-zone economic short-term indicators are computed through aggregation from Member States data. The seasonally adjusted figures can be calculated by seasonally adjusting the aggregate (direct approach) or aggregating the seasonally adjusted national data (indirect approach). Statistical and practical considerations to choose the right strategy are given in the paper. An application to ...
In this paper, we investigate the impact of the adjustment for seasonal effects with different seasonal adjustment methods, the possible pre-treatment for calendar effects and the different order of aggregation and adjustment for the determination of the turning points of the European business cycle. The European business cycle is represented first by the GDP series (referring to the classical definition ...
The German unemployment rate shows strong signs if non-stationarity over the course of the previous decades. This is in line with an insider-outsider model under full hysteresis. We applied a "theory-guided view" to the data using the structural VAR model as developed by Balmaseda, Dolado and López-Salido (2000) allowing for full hysteresis on the labour market. Our identification of the model implies ...
The deterioration of the income and employment position of unskilled workers in the OECD since the 1980s is a well-documented fact. The debate about the causes of this development is dominated by two competing hypotheses, "North-South Trade" ("globalisation") and technological progress. Several empirical methodologies have been used to identify and quantify the importance of these two explanations: ...
This paper applies Verdoorn's and Okun's law to derive efficient estimates of the employment and unemployment threshold in the Unified Germany. The analysis is built on a disaggregated dataset of regional labour markets, where spatial dependencies are taken into account. Especially, a spatial SUR model is proposed utilising the eigenfunction decomposition approach suggested by Griffith (1996, 2000). ...