1. 1 Integrating results The empirical study of macroeconomic time series is interesting. It is also difficult and not immediately rewarding. Many statistical and economic issues are involved. The main problems is that these issues are so interrelated that it does not seem sensible to address them one at a time. As soon as one sets about the making of a model of macroeconomic time series one has to choose which problems one will try to tackle oneself and which problems one will leave unresolved or to be solved by others. From a theoretic point of view it can be fruitful to concentrate oneself on only one problem. If one follows this strategy in empirical application one runs a serious risk of making a seemingly interesting model, that is just a corollary of some important mistake in the handling of other problems. Two well known examples of statistical artifacts are the finding of Kuznets "pseudo-waves" of about 20 years in economic activity (Sargent (1979, p. 248)) and the "spurious regression" of macroeconomic time series described in Granger and Newbold (1986, 6. 4). The easiest way to get away with possible mistakes is to admit they may be there in the first place, but that time constraints and unfamiliarity with the solution do not allow the researcher to do something about them. This can be a viable argument."

This book is intended for second year graduate students and professionals who have an interest in linear and nonlinear simultaneous equations mod els. It basically traces the evolution of econometrics beyond the general linear model (GLM), beginning with the general linear structural econo metric model (GLSEM) and ending with the generalized method of mo ments (GMM). Thus, it covers the identification problem (Chapter 3), maximum likelihood (ML) methods (Chapters 3 and 4), two and three stage least squares (2SLS, 3SLS) (Chapters 1 and 2), the general nonlinear model (GNLM) (Chapter 5), the general nonlinear simultaneous equations model (GNLSEM), the special ca'3e of GNLSEM with additive errors, non linear two and three stage least squares (NL2SLS, NL3SLS), the GMM for GNLSEIVl, and finally ends with a brief overview of causality and re lated issues, (Chapter 6). There is no discussion either of limited dependent variables, or of unit root related topics. It also contains a number of significant innovations. In a departure from the custom of the literature, identification and consistency for nonlinear models is handled through the Kullback information apparatus, as well as the theory of minimum contrast (MC) estimators. In fact, nearly all estimation problems handled in this volume can be approached through the theory of MC estimators. The power of this approach is demonstrated in Chapter 5, where the entire set of identification requirements for the GLSEM, in an ML context, is obtained almost effortlessly, through the apparatus of Kullback information."

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has become a standard approach for analyzing complex inter-relationships between observed and latent variables. Researchers appreciate the many advantages of PLS-SEM such as the possibility to estimate very complex models and the method's flexibility in terms of data requirements and measurement specification. This practical open access guide provides a step-by-step treatment of the major choices in analyzing PLS path models using R, a free software environment for statistical computing, which runs on Windows, macOS, and UNIX computer platforms. Adopting the R software's SEMinR package, which brings a friendly syntax to creating and estimating structural equation models, each chapter offers a concise overview of relevant topics and metrics, followed by an in-depth description of a case study. Simple instructions give readers the "how-tos" of using SEMinR to obtain solutions and document their results. Rules of thumb in every chapter provide guidance on best practices in the application and interpretation of PLS-SEM.

It is unlikely that any frontier of economics/econometrics is being pushed faster, further than that of computational techniques. The computer has become a tool for performing as well as an environment in which to perform economics and econometrics, taking over where theory bogs down, allowing at least approximate answers to questions that defy closed mathematical or analytical solutions. Tasks may now be attempted that were hitherto beyond human potential, and all the forces available can now be marshalled efficiently, leading to the achievement of desired goals. Computational Techniques for Econometrics and Economic Analysis is a collection of recent studies which exemplify all these elements, demonstrating the power that the computer brings to the economic analysts. The book is divided into four parts: 1 -- the computer and econometric methods; 2 -- the computer and economic analysis; 3 -- computational techniques for econometrics; and 4 -- the computer and econometric studies.

This book describes a series of laboratory experiments (with a total of 167 independent subjects) on forecasting behavior. In all experiments, the time series to be forecasted was generated by an abstract econometric model involving two or three artificial exogenous variables. This designprovides an optimal background for rational expectations and least-squares learning. As expected, these hypotheses do not explain observed forecasting behavior satisfactorily. Some phenomena related to this lack of rationality are studied: Concentration on changes rather than levels, underestimation of changes and overvaluation of volatile exogenous variables. Some learning behavior is observed. Finally, some aspects of individual forecasts such as prominence of "round" number, dispersion, etc., are studied.

It has been quite a challenge for econometricians to model economies in transition. There is no textbook at hand to master that task. Economic theory cannot be applied without adaptations to the characteristic change of a whole economic system. Regression analysis, taking into account past economic development only, is of limited use for the econometrician. Having econometric models at hand would be very helpful for an active economic policy to guide the transition process. Various scenarios representing strategies could be simulated in their consequences to the economy. The best alternative in respect to the government's objectives could be chosen. This very situation has born the idea of co-operation between L6dz and Frankfurt in 1990. There are problems of this kind in Poland and in Germany. The German situation is somewhat better than that of Poland as a relatively small centrally planned economy is being united with a substantial social market economy taking over a lot of the burden of the former mismanagement. Thus, it might be possible to share the experience in modelling the united Germany and preparing forecasts with the Polish model builders. In addition, it would be prOfitable for both model establishing teams to link their models in order to improve the forecasting potential. Moreover, the Polish partner has a broad national and international experience in econometric model building which makes co-operation smooth and fruitful. His experience in modelling countries with a centrally planned economy would also help to master the transition problems.

A macroeconomic disequilibrium model is developed for the Federal Republic of Germany. Starting with a microeconomic model of firm's behaviour, the optimal dynamic adjustment of employment and investment is derived. The model of the firm is complemented by an explicite aggregation procedure which allows to derive macroeconomic relations. The model is estimated with macroeconomic data for the Federal Republic of Germany. An important feature is the consistent introduction of dynamic adjustment into a model of the firm. A new method is the particular approach of a delayed adjustment of employment and investment. The estimation results show significant underutilizations of labour and capital and indicate the importance of supply constraints for imports and exports. As the most prominent result, they reveal the importance of the slow adjustment of employment and investment for the macroeconomic situation in Germany and especially for the persistence of high unemployment in the eighties.

The book is an in-depth review of the theory and empirics of the demand for money and other financial assets. The different theoretical approaches to the portfolio choice problem are described, together with an up-to-date survey of the results obtained from empirical studies of asset choice behaviour. Both single-equation studies and the more complete multi-asset portfolio models, are analysed.

This book reports new developments in applied econometrics. All papers originated in two international workshops that were organized in the University of Munich on July 6-7, 1989, and on January 11 - 12, 1990. Financial support for these conferences by the University of Munich and the Thyssen Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Since then all papers were substantially revised and updated. We wish to thank all authors for their patience with the revisions and Thomas Bauer, Lucie Merkle and Gisela Loos for editorial help. The ftrst section of the book collects contributions that address new "Methodological Developments." Two of them deal with problems in microeconometrics, the other two consider multi-equation systems. Martin Kukuk and Gerd Ronning treat "Ordinal Variables in Microeconometric Models." They especially deal with the case of limited-dependent variable models where some exogenous variables are either measured on an interval scale or a nominal scale. They discuss and compare two methods to deal with the problem. In his paper on "Goodness of Fit in Qualitative Choice Models: Review and Evaluation," Klaus F. Zimmermann investigates methods to summarize the predictive quality of models that deal with discrete alternatives. For these models, a widely accepted measure for evaluation like the R2, as in the case of ordinary least squares, does not exist. The paper summarizes the literature and suggests reasonable choices for evaluation on the basis of large-scale Monte Carlo investigations.

This graduate level textbook deals with analyzing and forecasting multiple time series. It considers a wide range of multiple time series models and methods. The models include vector autoregressive, vector autoregressive moving average, cointegrated, and periodic processes as well as state space and dynamic simultaneous equations models. Least squares, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian methods are considered for estimating these models. Different procedures for model selection or specification are treated and a range of tests and criteria for evaluating the adequacy of a chosen model are introduced. The choice of point and interval forecasts is considered and impulse response analysis, dynamic multipliers as well as innovation accounting are presented as tools for structural analysis within the multiple time series context. This book is accessible to graduate students in business and economics. In addition, multiple time series courses in other fields such as statistics and engineering may be based on this book. Applied researchers involved in analyzing multiple time series may benefit from the book as it provides the background and tools for their task. It enables the reader to perform his or her analyses in a gap to the difficult technical literature on the topic.

The modern system-wide approach to applied demand analysis emphasizes a unity between theory and applications. Its fIrm foundations in economic theory make it one of the most impressive areas of applied econometrics. This book presents a large number of applications of recent innovations in the area. The database used consist of about 18 annual observations for 10 commodities in 18 OECO countries (more than 3,100 data points). Such a large body of data should provide convincing evidence, one way or the other, about the validity of consumption theory. A PREVIEW OF THE BOOK The overall importance of the analysis presented in the book can be seen from the following table which shows the signifIcant contribution of the OECO to the world economy. As can be seen, the 24 member countries account for about 50 percent of world GOP in 1975. In this book we present an extensive analysis of the consumption patterns of the OECO countries.

Econometrics as an applied discipline attempts to use information in a most efficient manner, yet the information theory and entropy approach developed by Shannon and others has not played much of a role in applied econometrics. Econometrics of Information and Efficiency bridges the gap. Broadly viewed, information theory analyzes the uncertainty of a given set of data and its probabilistic characteristics. Whereas the economic theory of information emphasizes the value of information to agents in a market, the entropy theory stresses the various aspects of imprecision of data and their interactions with the subjective decision processes. The tools of information theory, such as the maximum entropy principle, mutual information and the minimum discrepancy are useful in several areas of statistical inference, e.g., Bayesian estimation, expected maximum likelihood principle, the fuzzy statistical regression. This volume analyzes the applications of these tools of information theory to the most commonly used models in econometrics. The outstanding features of Econometrics of Information and Efficiency are: A critical survey of the uses of information theory in economics and econometrics; An integration of applied information theory and economic efficiency analysis; The development of a new economic hypothesis relating information theory to economic growth models; New lines of research are emphasized.

The book is an in-depth review of the theory and empirics of the demand for money and other financial assets. The different theoretical approaches to the portfolio choice problem are described, together with an up-to-date survey of the results obtained from empirical studies of asset choice behaviour. Both single-equation studies and the more complete multi-asset portfolio models, are analysed.

In the recent years, the study of cointegrated time series and the use of error correction models have become extremely popular in the econometric literature. This book provides an analysis of the notion of (weak) exogeneity, which is necessary to sustain valid inference in sub-systems, inthe framework of error correction models (ECMs). In many practical situations, the applied econometrician wants to introduce "structure" on his/her model in order to get economically meaningful coefficients. For thispurpose, ECMs in structural form provide an appealing framework, allowing the researcher to introduce (theoretically motivated) identification restrictions on the long run relationships. In this case, the validity of the inference will depend on a number of conditions which are investigated here. In particular, we point out that orthogonality tests, often used to test for weak exogeneity or for general misspecification, behave poorly in finite samples and are often not very useful in cointegrated systems.

In contemporary labor economics increasing attention is paid to the fact that unemployment is not only a stock but also a flow phenomenon. The present micro-econometric study analyses the impact of important socio-economic characteristics on unemployment duration in West Germany. Based on a search theoretic framework unemployment duration is considered as a stochastic process whose evolution is influenced by economicand demographic variables like unemployment benefits, expected wage offers, training and age. This is modeled by application of the concept of the hazard rate which denotes the conditional exit rate from unemployment over time given elapsed unemployment duration. Contrasting more traditional models a semi-parametric approachis chosen which reduces the danger of mis-specification of the stochastic duration process. This procedure also is particularly suitable for the analysis of grouped observations on unemployment duration typically generated by longitudinal data sets as the German "Socio-Economic Panel" which is utilized for this study. Besides deriving a set of empirical results on unemployment duration in West Germanymethodological issues of duration analysis are considered with particular attention paid to the impact of the sample design. Also, important outcomes from search theory and findings from other hazard rate analysesare surveyed.

The 17th Symposium on Operations Research was held at UniversitAt der Bundeswehr Hamburg, August 25-28, 1992, as the annual meeting of the Gesellschaft fA1/4r Mathematik, A-konomie und Operations Research (GMA-OR). The aim of this book is to provide a timely and comprehensive documentation of the symposium's scientific activities. It contains extended abstracts of most of the papers presented there. The symposium fell into twelve sections and an overlapping cross-section workshop. The sections covered established fields of theory and application such as (1) Mathematical Modelling in OR, (2) Stochastic Models of OR, (3) Combinatorial Optimization and Discrete Mathematics, (4) Linear and Non-Linear Optimization, (5) Systems and Control Theory, (6) Decision Support and Information Systems, (7) Applications in Business and Economics, (8) Econometrics and Statistics, (9) Micro-Economics and Game Theory, Macro-Economics and Applied Economics, Decision Theory, Utility and Risk, Banking, Finance and Insurance. As a novelty and an experiment, a cross-section workshop on Environmental Systems and Economics had been included in the program which was devoted to a topic of current political and scientific interest.

This book presents a theory of the general dynamic economic equilibrium which is a development of the static theory of Walras and Pareto. The work has built up an analytical model of the effective, current movement of an economic system, founded on the logic of the individual changing programmes - a basis for finding out the laws of all types of endogenous and exogenous movements of the economy. Indeed, the model can be used in the treatment of the typical problems of dynamic economics, by means of the author's method of variational dynamic analysis.

This sequel to the author's "Early Development in Mathematical Economics" covers developments in this field after the appearance of Cournot's "Recherches" in 1838 and until the publication of Jevons' "Theory" in 1871.

This collection of papers describes advances in the measurement of innovation output, principally through the use of a new technique based on scanning of trade and technical journals. Experience in several countries is assessed and the strength and weaknesses of the technique discussed. The conclusion is that, taken together with recent advances in the design of questionnaires for postal surveys of innovation, this technique provides a radically improved data source for testing innovation theories and for effective policy analysis.

This book presents a theory of the general dynamic economic equilibrium which is a development of the static theory of Walras and Pareto. The work has built up an analytical model of the effective, current movement of an economic system, founded on the logic of the individual changing programmes - a basis for finding out the laws of all types of endogenous and exogenous movements of the economy. Indeed, the model can be used in the treatment of the typical problems of dynamic economics, by means of the author's method of variational dynamic analysis.

International commodity markets have traditionally attracted the attention of economists, econometricians, and policy makers especially in and following politically tumultuous times. For instance, the primary commodity price boom of 1973/74 and the subsequent period of highly volatile world market prices initiated increased research on commodity markets which quickly focused on possible price stabilization schemes, particularly on buffer stocks. Simultaneously, the issue clearly advanced in priority on the political agenda, such that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) proposed an "Integrated Program for Commodities" (IPC) intended to stabilize the world market prices of ten so-called "core commodities"l (UNCTAD (1974, 1976a), Behrman (1979)). Many developing nations welcomed the IPC almost enthusiastically, but it did not receive more than lukewarm support by major industrialized countries, apparently due to the experience with some thirty international commodity agreements past World War II2. Critical evaluations have, among others, been presented by McNicol (1978), Gordon-Ashworth (1984), and Macbean & Nguyen (1987). The most detailed of these studies is Gordon-Ashworth's, who concludes that "on balance ... the performance of international commodity agreements has been too unreliable and their distributive effects too uneven to secure the development goals that have been set" (1984, p. 284)3. Consequently, the IPC turned out to be quite controversial a topic on the UNCTAD's 1976 meeting in Nairobi and has not been able to gain any impetus since. lThese were cocoa, coffee, copper, cotton, jute, rubber, sisal, sugar, tea, and tin.

In this testament to the distinguished career of H.S. Houthakker a number of Professor Houthakker's friends, former colleagues and former students offer essays which build upon and extend his many contributions to economics in aggregation, consumption, growth and trade. Among the many distinguished contributors are Paul Samuelson, Werner Hildenbrand, John Muellbauer and Lester Telser. The book also includes four previously unpublished papers and notes by its distinguished dedicatee.

Comprising of seven up-to-date comprehensive surveys from leading scholars in Econometrics, this book follows the format of the highly successful book, "Surveys in Econometrics," edited by Oxley, et al. (Blackwell Publishers 1995).

This collection is a unique resource for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students on quantitative/econometrics courses, as well as a wider range of academics and professional economists.

The contributions consider a range of contemporary topics from the area of cointegration and unit root testing where empirical examples are used wherever possible to illustrate the issue at hand. The topics range from issues associated with seasonality and cointegration, to panel unit root tests and the econometrics of I(2) processes.

It is commonly believed that macroeconomic models are not useful for policy analysis because they do not take proper account of agents' expectations. Over the last decade, mainstream macroeconomic models in the UK and elsewhere have taken on board the Rational Expectations Revolution' by explicitly incorporating expectations of the future. In principle, one can perform the same technical exercises on a forward expectations model as on a conventional model -- and more! Rational Expectations in Macroeconomic Models deals with the numerical methods necessary to carry out policy analysis and forecasting with these models. These methods are often passed on by word of mouth or confined to obscure journals. Rational Expectations in Macroeconomic Models brings them together with applications which are interesting in their own right. There is no comparable textbook in the literature. The specific subjects include: (i) solving for model consistent expectations; (ii) the choice of terminal condition and time horizon; (iii) experimental design: i.e., the effect of temporary vs permanent, anticipated vs. unanticipated shocks; deterministic vs. stochastic, dynamic vs. static simulation; (iv) the role of exchange rate; (v) optimal control and inflation-output tradeoffs. The models used are those of the Liverpool Research Group in Macroeconomics, the London Business School and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

Economics has been basically a study of the interactions between organizations, with some organizations being so small we only have one person in them. The internal organization of the largest hierarchies has indeed been looked at, but a good reason for working less on these organizations is that the internal reactions are much harder to understand. It is sensible to solve the problems we can solve and put the others off until later. The author's basic purpose here is to look at these larger hierarchical organizations, and develop a scientific account of them. In Economic Hierarchies, Organization and the Structure of Production Gordon Tullock examines the internal functioning and organization of the corporation. In the author's personal tradition, the book relies on narrative analysis rather than mathematical complexity to convey insights into the functioning of the corporation.