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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > Economic forecasting
This book provides a comprehensive description of the
state-of-the-art in modelling global and national economies. It
introduces the long-run structural approach to modelling that can
be readily adopted for use in understanding how economies work, and
in generating forecasts for decision- and policy-makers. The book
contains a thorough description of recent developments in
macroeconomics and econometrics, which should be of interest to
advanced students and researchers, but is also written to be
accessible and helpful to practitioners in government and the
private sector. The long-run structural approach is illustrated
with various global and national examples, including a step-by-step
description of the development and use of a model of the UK
economy. Throughout, the book emphasises the use of
macroeconometric modelling in the real world and is written in a
way that ensures the techniques illustrated can be replicated or
applied in new contexts. The transparency and pragmatism of the
modelling approach used within this book will be attractive to
practitioners who need manageable and interpretable models to
answer specific questions.
Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the
future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty.
It starts from the premise that dynamic capitalist economies are
characterized by relentless innovation and novelty and hence
exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk.
The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form
expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face.
This edited volume lays the foundations for a new model of economic
reasoning by showing how, in conditions of uncertainty, economic
actors combine calculation with imaginaries and narratives to form
fictional expectations that coordinate action and provide the
confidence to act. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic
sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present
theoretically grounded empirical case studies. These demonstrate
how grand narratives, central bank forward guidance, economic
forecasts, finance models, business plans, visions of technological
futures, and new era stories influence behaviour and become
instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of
shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent
imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative
economics.
This is the most sophisticated and up-to-date econometric
analysis of business cycles now available. Francis Diebold and
Glenn Rudebusch have long been acknowledged as leading experts on
business cycles. And here they present a highly integrative
collection of their most important essays on the subject, along
with a detailed introduction that draws together the book's
principal themes and findings.
Diebold and Rudebusch use the latest quantitative methods to
address five principal questions about the measurement, modeling,
and forecasting of business cycles. They ask whether business
cycles have become more moderate in the postwar period, concluding
that recessions have, in fact, been shorter and shallower. They
consider whether economic expansions and contractions tend to die
of "old age." Contrary to popular wisdom, they find little evidence
that expansions become more fragile the longer they last, although
they do find that contractions are increasingly likely to end as
they age. The authors discuss the defining characteristics of
business cycles, focusing on how economic variables move together
and on the timing of the slow alternation between expansions and
contractions. They explore the difficulties of distinguishing
between long-term trends in the economy and cyclical fluctuations.
And they examine how business cycles can be forecast, looking in
particular at how to predict turning points in cycles, rather than
merely the level of future economic activity. They show here that
the index of leading economic indicators is a poor predictor of
future economic activity, and consider what we can learn from other
indicators, such as financial variables. Throughout, the authors
make use of a variety of advanced econometric techniques, including
nonparametric analysis, fractional integration, and
regime-switching models. Business Cycles is crucial reading for
policymakers, bankers, and business executives.
This report outlines economic prospects in developing Asia amid
global turbulence and lingering pandemic risks. It discusses the
implications of school closures and the invasion of Ukraine, and
explores mobilizing taxes for development. Developing Asia's
outlook remains positive, with growth of 5.2% expected in 2022 and
5.3% in 2023. Downside risks include spillover from geopolitical
tensions, such as via higher-than-expected commodity prices. The
Russian invasion of Ukraine has upended the global economic outlook
and greatly amplified uncertainty for a world economy still
contending with COVID-19. Aggressive monetary policy tightening in
the United States could lead to financial instability. In the
medium term, scarring from the pandemic poses significant risks,
including learning losses from continued school closures that could
worsen economic inequality. The region's economies urgently need to
mobilize fiscal resources to restore the health of public finances
and build a more inclusive and sustainable future. Opportunities to
strengthen revenue will depend on specific circumstances, but more
efficient value-added tax and better-optimized tax incentives hold
promise for many economies. Strengthening personal income and
property taxes can raise additional revenue and make tax systems
more progressive. Significant opportunities exist to expand the use
of tax and other fiscal instruments to tackle environmental and
health priorities while raising revenue.
Growth in developing Asia is moderating but remains robust. As
global trade slows and investment weakens, regional growth
forecasts are trimmed from Asian Development Outlook 2019 by 0.3
percentage points for 2019 and by 0.1 points for 2020 compared to
April forecasts. The revisions reflect gloomier prospects for
international trade and evidence of slowing growth in the advanced
economies and the People's Republic of China, as well as in India
and the larger economies in East and Southeast Asia. Inflation
remains benign in the region, but pressure is building slightly as
food prices rise. Inflation across developing Asia is forecast at
2.7% this year and next, or 0.2 percentage points up from April
forecasts.
Economists often look at markets as given, and try to make
predictions about who will do what and what will happen in these
markets Market design, by contrast, does not take markets as given;
instead, it combines insights from economic and game theory
together with common sense and lessons learned from empirical work
and experimental analysis to aid in the design and implementation
of actual markets In recent years the field has grown dramatically,
partially because of the successful wave of spectrum auctions in
the US and in Europe, which have been designed by a number of
prominent economists, and partially because of the increase use of
the Internet as the platform over which markets are designed and
run There is now a large number of applications and a growing
theoretical literature. The Handbook of Market Design brings
together the latest research from leading experts to provide a
comprehensive description of applied market design over the last
two decades In particular, it surveys matching markets:
environments where there is a need to match large two-sided
populations to one another, such as medical residents and
hospitals, law clerks and judges, or patients and kidney donors It
also examines a number of applications related to electronic
markets, e-commerce, and the effect of the Internet on competition
between exchanges
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