Macroeconomic forecasts are often based on the interaction between econometric models and experts. A forecast that is based only on an econometric model is replicable and may be unbiased, whereas a forecast that is not based only on an econometric model, but also incorporates an expert's touch, is non-replicable and is typically biased. In this paper we propose a methodology to analyze the qual...

As continuously studied by numerous papers, demographic factors are expected to be crucial components that affect the saving rates of countries. This paper investigates the correlation between the domestic saving rates and the old age dependency ratio, by examining the data set of 15 high income countries from 1975 to 2010, based on hypothesis that old age dependency ratio is negatively correla...

We propose a graphical method to visualize possible time-varying correlations between stock market returns. The method can be useful for observing stable or emerging clusters of stock markets with similar behavior. The graphs, which originate from applying multidiŽ . mensional scaling techniques MDS , may also guide the construction of multivariate econometric models. We illustrate our method f...

Whenever industrial plants consume power and heat there is a need to consider energy efficiency investment on a cogeneration (CHP) plant. We investigate economic incentives influencing the adoption of energy saving technology by industry, namely, CHP in UK and Dutch manufacturing sectors. Our analysis is based on an empirical model by the application of cross sectional time series econometric m...

This study measures the impact of investment climate factors on the total factor productivity (TFP) of agricultural manufacturing firms in Hanoi, Vietnam. Endogeneity of the production function and of the investment climate variables is addressed by using econometric models, based on individual firm information, and by aggregating investment climate factors by various business lines. Specifical...

All opinions expressed here are those of the author and not those of the Economics Education and Research Consortium. Research dissemination by the EERC may include views on policy, but the EERC itself takes no institutional policy positions The problem of poverty and inequality measurement in contemporary Russian society is considered within the framework of the general problem of social tensi...

A common stochastic restriction in econometric models separable in the latent variables is the assumption of stochastic independence between the unobserved and observed exogenous variables. Both simple and composite tests of this assumption are derived from properties of independence empirical processes and the consistency of these tests is established. As an application, we simulate estimation...

The explanation of aggregate and sectoral investment behavior has been one of the less successful endeavors in empirical economics. Existing econometric models have had little success in explaining or predicting investment spending. This may be because most such models fail to account for the irreversibility of most investment spending. With irreversibility, changes in the riskiness of future c...

This article examines the effect of the Massachusetts workforce development system on the earnings of disadvantaged adults using nonexperimental data from the late 1990s. The authors construct a comparison sample for program participants using individuals who apply for and are offered services yet do not participate in a training program. They present a series of difference-in-difference estima...

The difficulty of accounting for expectational effects in macro-economic models is well known. The standard procedure in dealing with this problem in the construction of large-scale macro-econometric models is to use current and lagged values as “proxies” for expected future values. An alternative procedure is to assume that expectations are rational. Although the assumption of rational expecta...