International relations scholars have developed many theories to describe the evolution and existence of international conflicts. One important idea is the “democratic peace,” which argues that democracies are less likely to engage in conflict with each other. However, much of the work testing democratic peace theory has been static and does not address dynamic, causal mechanisms by which democ...

Central banks and other forecasters have become increasingly interested in various aspects of density forecasts. However, recent sharp changes in macroeconomic volatility — such as the Great Moderation and the more recent sharp rise in volatility associated with greater variation in energy prices and the deep global recession — pose significant challenges to density forecasting. Accordingly, th...

Central banks and other forecasters are increasingly interested in various aspects of density forecasts. However, recent sharp changes in macroeconomic volatility – such as the Great Moderation and the more recent sharp rise in volatility associated with greater variation in energy prices and the deep global recession – pose significant challenges to density forecasting. Accordingly, this paper...

Myotilin and the calsarcin family member FATZ-1 (also called calsarcin-2 or myozenin-1) are recently discovered sarcomeric proteins implicated in the assembly and stabilization of the Z-discs in skeletal muscle. The essential role of myotilin in skeletal muscle is attested by the observation that certain forms of myofibrillar myopathy and limb girdle muscular dystrophy are caused by mutations i...

This paper shows entropic tilting to be a flexible and powerful tool for combining mediumterm forecasts from BVARs with short-term forecasts from other sources (nowcasts from either surveys or other models). Tilting systematically improves the accuracy of both point and density forecasts, and tilting the BVAR forecasts based on nowcast means and variances yields slightly greater gains in densit...

In the assessment of governments’ fiscal performance, exchange rates play some roles while capital movements could serve as determinant discipline. This study examined effects rate devaluation, and inflows, on budgetary spending, interactions among variables using Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) sys-generalized method moments (GMM) estimators with 1,184 panel observations. The covers 37 e...

Working papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded offi cial Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views stated herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Ban...