Empirical Economics

Madlener, Reinhard; Alt, Raimund

doi: 10.1007/BF01175970pmid: N/A

In this paper a set of ten different single-equation models of residential energy demand is being analyzed, derived by the imposition of linear parameter restrictions on a fairly general autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) model. Residential energy consumption is assumed to be explainable by households' real disposable income, movements in the real price of energy, and the temperature variable ‘heating degree days’. In the empirical application, Austrian annual data for the period 1970 to 1992 are used. The main focus of the paper is on the control of the overall significance level of the tests based on the application of the closure test principle, introduced by Marcus, Peritz, and Gabriel (1976). The application illustrates nicely how one can, by defining a closed system of hypotheses, control the significance level α in supporting the search for a suitable specific model. The wide range of estimated elasticities, however, indicates that the estimation results depend strongly on the choice of the model specification.

Peiró, Amado

doi: 10.1007/BF01175971pmid: N/A

This paper investigates the relationships between stock returns, changes in production, and changes in interest rates in three European countries: France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The results obtained using annual data are much more conclusive than those obtained using quarterly data. Stock returns are affected by current changes in interest rates and by future changes in production. The dependence on changes in interest rates seems to be higher than on changes in production. Furthermore, the influence of future changes in production on stock returns diminishes substantially when contemporaneous changes in interest rates are taken into account. With reference to these points, the European markets behave in a similar fashion, but are in sharp contrast with the U.S. market.

Han, Hsiang-Ling

doi: 10.1007/BF01175972pmid: N/A

Monte Carlo simulations are performed to examine small sample properties of Canonical Cointegrating Regressions (CCR). The first data generation process is designed to generate both cointegrated and non-cointegrated systems with normal disturbances. If the near-observational equivalence of the stationary and the integrated processes is not significant, both powers and empirical sizes of CCR tests are acceptable. The second data generation process is based on the error correction model. Cointegrated systems with various fat-tailed disturbances are generated and analyzed. The empirical sizes of CCR tests with studentt disturbances and GARCH disturbances are found to be reasonable under certain restrictions. The last data generation process is a generalized least squares (GLS) process that incorporates heteroskedasticity into the error correction model. Again, the empirical sizes of CCR tests are reasonable.

Mostaghimi, Mehdi; Rezayat, Fahimeh

doi: 10.1007/BF01175973pmid: N/A

This paper presents a methodology for producing a probability forecast of a turning point in U.S. economy using Composite Leading Indicators. This methodology is based on classical statistical decision theory and uses information-theoretic measurement to produce a probability. The methodology is flexible using as many historical data points as desired. This methodology is applied to producing probability forecasts of a downturn in U.S. economy in the 1970–1990 period. Four probability forecasts are produced using different amounts of information. The performance of these forecasts is evaluated using the actual downturn points and the scores measuring accuracy, calibration, and resolution. An indirect comparison of these forecasts with Diebold and Rudebusch's sequential probability recursion is also presented. It is shown that the performances of our best two models are statistically different from the performance of the three-consecutive-month decline model and are the same as the one for the best probit model. The probit model, however, is more conservative in its predictions than our two models.

Krämer, Walter; Runde, Ralf

doi: 10.1007/BF01175974pmid: N/A

We investigate various distributional properties of German stock returns, like serial correlation, the existence of higher moments and calendar effects, with a focus on the robustness of various empirical measures to a nonstandard distribution of the returns. We exhibit the well known Monday effect also for German stocks, and show that its significance, like that of tests for serial correlation, depends on distributional assumptions which are often overlooked.

Ray, Ranjan

doi: 10.1007/BF01175975pmid: N/A

This paper provides evidence in favour of greater generality in the demographic demand literature. We propose two demographic demand procedures. One extends the Gorman model by allowing non additive interaction between ‘overheads’ and ‘Barten scaling’. The other extends ‘Price Scaling’, by allowing the equivalence scale to vary with utility, and offers a test of ‘Equivalence Scale Exactness’ (ESE). The rejection of ESE is robust to the assumed demand functional forms (RNLPS, QAIDS), to items chosen, and the estimation method (MLE, GMM). The results show that published cell averages yield well determined estimates of the demographic generalisation parameters.