Using data from the European Central Bank's Survey of Professional Forecasters, we analyze role ex-ante conditioning variables for macroeconomic forecasts. In particular, test to which extent heterogeneity, updating and ex-post performance predictions inflation, real GDP growth unemployment rate are related assumptions about future oil prices, exchange rates, interest rates wage growth. Our fin...

This paper presents a new self-organizing model based on the generalized particle dynamics (GPD) for virtual enterprises.̂ Differing from traditional organizing model for virtual enterprises, the GPD-based selforganizing model may provide the optimal organization for desired virtual enterprises according to historical organizations and current requirements. The GPD conception, algorithm and its ...

We analyze the causes of apparent bias toward optimism in growth forecasts underpinning design IMF-supported programs, which has been documented literature. find that financial variables observable to forecasters are strong predictors forecast errors. The greater expansion credit-to-GDP gap years preceding a forecast, its over-optimism about over next two years. This result is strongest among w...

Glycerol production by Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is required for redox-cofactor balancing in anaerobic cultures, causes yield reduction in industrial bioethanol production. Recently, glycerol formation in anaerobic S. cerevisiae cultures was eliminated by expressing Escherichia coli (acetylating) acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (encoded by mhpF) and simultaneously deleting the GPD1 and GPD2 ge...

The generalised peroxisomal disorders (GPDs) Zellweger syndrome (ZS), neonatal adrenoleucodystrophy (NALD), and infantile Refsum's disease (IRD) are autosomal recessive disorders associated with a failure to assemble mature peroxisomes. We confirmed the diagnosis of a GPD in eight ZS and four IRD patients (GPD1 to GPD12) biochemically by measuring very long chain fatty acids, plasmalogen biosyn...

While the conditional mean is known to provide the minimum mean square error (MSE) forecast – and hence is optimal under a squared-error loss function – it must often in practice be replaced by a noisy estimate when model parameters are estimated over a small sample. Here two results are obtained, both of which motivate the use of forecasts biased toward zero (shrinkage forecasts) in such setti...