Econometric Business Cycle Research deals with econometric business cycle research (EBCR), a term introduced by the Nobel-laureate Jan Tinbergen for his econometric method of testing (economic) business cycle theories. EBCR combines economic theory and measurement in the study of business cycles, i.e., ups and downs in overall economic activity. We assess four methods of EBCR: business cycle indicators, simultaneous equations models, vector autoregressive systems and real business indicators. After a sketch of the history of the methods, we investigate whether the methods meet the goals of EBCR: the three traditional ones, description, forecasting and policy evaluation, and the one Tinbergen introduced, the implementation-testing of business cycles. The first three EBCR methods are illustrated for the Netherlands, a typical example of a small, open economy. The main conclusion of the book is that simultaneous equation models are the best vehicle for EBCR, if all its goals are to be attained simultaneously. This conclusion is based on a fairly detailed assessment of the methods and is not over-turned in the empirical illustrations. The main conclusion does not imply the end of other EBCR methods. Not all goals have to be met with a single vehicle, other methods might serve the purpose equally well - or even better. For example, if one is interested in business cycle forecasts, one might prefer a business cycle indicator or vector autoregressive system. A second conclusion is that many ideas/concepts that play an important role in current discussions about econometric methodology in general and EBCR in particular, were put forward in the 1930s and 1940s. A third conclusion is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to compare the outcomes of RBC models to outcomes of the other three methods, because RBC modellers are not interested in modelling business cycles on an observation-per-observation basis. A more general conclusion in this respect is that methods should adopt the same concept of business cycles to make them comparable.

Time Series: Theory and Methods is a systematic account of linear time series models and their application to the modelling and prediction of data collected sequentially in time. The aim is to provide specific techniques for handling data and at the same time to provide a thorough understanding of the mathematical basis for techniques. Both time and frequency domain methods are discussed, but the book is written in such a way that either approach could be emphasized. The book intended to be a text for graduate students in statistics, mathematics, engineering, and the natural or social sciences. It contains substantial chapters on multivariate series and state-space models (including applications of the Kalman recursions to missing-value problems) and shorter accounts of special topics including long-range dependence, infinite variance processes and non-linear models. Most of the programs used in the book are available on diskettes for the IBM-PC. These diskettes, with the accompanying manual, ITSM: The Interactive Time Series Modelling Package for the PC, also by Brockwell and Davis, can be purchased from Springer-Verlag.

Studies in Consumer Demand - Econometric Methods Applied to Market Data contains eight previously unpublished studies of consumer demand. Each study stands on its own as a complete econometric analysis of demand for a well-defined consumer product. The econometric methods range from simple regression techniques applied in the first four chapters, to the use of logit and multinomial logit models used in chapters 5 and 6, to the use of nested logit models in chapters 6 and 7, and finally to the discrete/continuous modeling methods used in chapter 8. Emphasis is on applications rather than econometric theory. In each case, enough detail is provided for the reader to understand the purpose of the analysis, the availability and suitability of data, and the econometric approach to measuring demand.

Considerable work has been done on chaotic dynamics in the field of economic growth and dynamic macroeconomic models during the last two decades. This book considers numerous new developments: introduction of infrastructure in growth models, heterogeneity of agents, hysteresis systems, overlapping models with "pay-as-you-go" systems, keynesian approaches with finance considerations, interactions between relaxation cycles and chaotic dynamics, methodological issues, long memory processes and fractals... A volume of contributions which shows the relevance and fruitfulness of non-linear analysis for the explanation of complex dynamics in economic systems.

Many econometric models contain unknown functions as well as finite- dimensional parameters. Examples of such unknown functions are the distribution function of an unobserved random variable or a transformation of an observed variable. Econometric methods for estimating population parameters in the presence of unknown functions are called "semiparametric." During the past 15 years, much research has been carried out on semiparametric econometric models that are relevant to empirical economics. This book synthesizes the results that have been achieved for five important classes of models. The book is aimed at graduate students in econometrics and statistics as well as professionals who are not experts in semiparametic methods. The usefulness of the methods will be illustrated with applications that use real data.

This volume is in honour of the remarkable career of the Father of Spatial Econometrics, Professor Jean Paelinck, presently of the Tinbergen Institute, Rotterdam. Jean Paelinck, arguably, is the founder of modern spatial econometrics. The impact on the profession through his work in spatial econometrics, regional science, and more conventional economics can be measured in many ways: through the work of his students, his devotion to and activism in facilitating the diffusion of regional science to Poland, the formulation and development of his FLEUR model, his co-founding of the French-speaking Regional Science Association, the voluminous references to his scholarly publications, his many invitations to be a featured speaker at conferences and universities throughout the world, the offices he has held in scholarly and professional associations, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Netherlands Economic Institute, and the numerous honorary degrees he has been awarded. A series of special sessions in honour of Jean Paelinck were organized at the most prominent regional science meetings around the world. A number of prominent scholars in the field organized and participated in special sessions labelled In Honour of Professor Paelinck.' These sessions reflect a truly global reach of the techniques and methods pioneered by him. As an outgrowth of six conferences final versions of the selection of papers are collected in this volume. Prominent ideas contained in each of the selected contributions can be traced explicitly to work by Jean Paelinck.

This manuscript is about the joint dynamics of stock returns and trading volume. It grew out of my attempt to construct an intertemporal asset pricing model with rational agents which can. explain the relation between volume, volatility and persistence of stock return documented in empirical literature. Most part of the manuscript is taken from my thesis. I wish to express my deep appreciation to Peter Kugler and Benedikt Poetscher, my advisors of the thesis, for their invaluable guidance and support. I wish to thank Gerhard Orosel and Gerhard Sorger for their encouraging and helpful discussions. Finally, my thanks go to George Tauchen who has been generous in giving me the benefit of his numerical and computational experience, in providing me with programs and in his encouragement. Contents 1 Introduction 1 7 2 Efficient Stock Markets Equilibrium Models of Asset Pricing 8 2. 1 2. 1. 1 The Martigale Model of Stock Prices 8 2. 1. 2 Lucas' Consumption Based Asset Pricing Model 9 2. 2 Econometric Tests of the Efficient Market Hypothesis 13 2. 2. 1 Autocorrelation Based Tests 14 16 2. 2. 2 Volatility Tests Time-Varying Expected Returns 25 2. 2. 3 3 The Informational Role of Volume 29 3. 1 Standard Grossman-Stiglitz Model 31 3. 2 The No-Trad Result of the BEO Model 34 A Model with Nontradable Asset 37 3. 3 4 Volume and Volatility of Stock Returns 43 4. 1 Empirical and Numerical Results 45 4.

This volume contains revised versions of 43 papers presented during the 21st Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft fur Klassifikation (GfKl), the German Classification Society. The conference took place at the University of Pots- dam (Germany) in March 1997; the local organizer was Prof. 1. Balderjahn, Chair of Business Administration and Marketing at Potsdam. The scientific program of the conference included 103 plenary and con- tributed papers, software and book presentations as well as special (tutorial) courses. Researchers and practitioners interested in data analysis and clus- tering methods, information sciences and database techniques, and in the main topic of the conference: data highways and their importance for classifi- cation and data analysis, had the opportunity to discuss recent developments and to establish cross-disciplinary cooperation in these fields. The conference owed much to its sponsors - Berliner Volksbank - Daimler Benz AG - Deutsche Telekom AG Direktion Potsdam - Dresdner Bank AG Filiale Potsdam - Henkel KGaA - Landeszentralbank in Berlin und Brandenburg - Ministerium fur Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes Brandenburg - Sci con GmbH - Siemens AG - Universitat Potsdam - Unternehmensgruppe Roland Ernst who helped in many ways. Their generous support is gratefully acknowl- edged. In the present proceedings volume, selected and peer-reviewed papers are presented in six chapters as follows.

One aim of this book is to examine the causes of fluctuations in the mark/dollar, pound/dollar, and yen/dollar real exchange rates for the period 1972-1994 with quarterly data to determine appropriate policy recommendations to reduce these movements. A second aim is to investigate whether the three real exchange rates are covariance-stationary or not and to which extent they are covariance-stationary, respectively. These aims are reached by using a two-country overshooting model for real exchange rates with real government expenditure and by applying Johansen's maximum likelihood cointegration procedure and a factor model of Gonzalo and Granger to this model.

Since there exists a multi-level policy making system in the market economies, choices of decision makers at different levels should be considered explicitly in the formulation of sectoral plans and policies. To support the hypothesis, a theoretical energy planning approach is developed within the framework of the theory of economic policy planning, policy systems analysis and multi-level programming. The Parametric Programming Search Algorithm has been developed. On the basis of this theoretical model, an Australian Energy Policy System Optimisation Model (AEPSOM) has been developed and is used to formulate an Australian multi-level energy plan.

The present book was accepted as a dissertation at the Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin in summer 1996. I am very much obliged to thank my advisor, Professor Wolfgang Hardie, for the continuous, always inspiring support and for opening me the world of non parametric statistics. Without him I probably would have worked on a different, less exciting topic and this book would not exist. Also, I would like to thank my second advisor, Professor Helmut Liitkepohl, for his excellent introduction to time series analysis and for always helpful comments on my work. This work was financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein schaft, in the first stage while I was a member of the Graduiertenkolleg "Ap plied Microeconomics," and later when I came to the Sonderforschungsbereich 373. For an interestingly widespread academic surrounding I want to thank the members of the Graduiertenkolleg and the Sonderforschungsbereich, es pecially Stefan Sperlich and Axel Werwatz. For the use of XploRe and many other issues I received substantial help from my colleagues Sigbert Klinke, Thomas Kotter, Marlene Miiller and Swetlana Schmelzer. Concerning many central topics of this dissertation, helpful and improving comments were given by Jorg Breitung, Helmut Herwartz, RolfTschernig and Lijian Yang, who also revised most parts of the manuscript. I have much reason to thank them for their help. Of course, all remaining errors are mine. Berlin, July 1997 CHRISTIAN M 0 HAFNER Contents Preface . . . . . IX List of Tables ."

This is the first book in the Selecta, the collected works of Benoit Mandelbrot. This volume incorporates his original contributions to finance. The chapters consist of much new material prepared for this volume, as well as reprints of his classic papers which are devoted to the roles that discontinuity and related forms of concentration play in finance and economics. Much of this work helps to lay a foundation for evaluating risks in trading strategies.

We live in a time of economic virtualism, whereby our lives are made to conform to the virtual reality of economic thought. Globalization, transnational capitalism, structural adjustment programmes and the decay of welfare are all signs of the growing power of economics, one of the most potent forces of recent decades. In the last thirty years, economics has ceased to be just an academic discipline concerned with the study of economy, and has come to be the only legitimate way to think about all aspects of society and how we order our lives. Economic models are no longer measured against the world they seek to describe, but instead the world is measured against them, found wanting and made to conform.This profound and dangerous change in the power of abstract economics to shape the lives of people in rich and poor countries alike is the subject of this interdisciplinary study. Contributors show how economics has come to portray a virtual reality -- a world that seems real but is merely a reflection of a neo-classical model -- and how governments, the World Bank and the IMF combine to stamp the world with a virtual image that condemns as irrational our local social and cultural arrangements. Further, it is argued that virtualism represents the worrying emergence of new forms of abstraction in the political economy, of which economics is just one example.

This book presents an extensive survey of the theory and empirics of international parity conditions which are critical to our understanding of the linkages between world markets and the movement of interest and exchange rates across countries. The book falls into three parts dealing with the theory, methods of econometric testing and existing empirical evidence. Although it is intended to provide a consensus view on the subject, the authors also make some controversial propositions, particularly on the purchasing power parity conditions.

1.1 Economic issues to be analyzed This research examines two elements of the Swiss market for electricity: the residential electricity demand by time-of-use and the cost structure of municipal electricity distribution utilities. The empirical results of demand and cost elasticities allow the investigation of interesting economic and policy issues such as the desirability of a widespread introduction of time-of-use pricing for residential customers, the desirability of side-by-side competition in the distribution of electricity and, more generally, the economic effects of a reduction of the load factor and of mergers between electric distribution utilities on costs. Desirability of time-of-use pricing In the last decade there has been an intensifying debate in Switzerland about efficacy of electricity rate reforms in order to improve the efficiency of electricity use. This debate was initiated by two main events. First, there was an important growth of electricity consumption. Second, the Chernobyl accident in 1986 aroused widespread public concern about the problems associated with nuclear power and waste disposal. As a result, in 1991 the Swiss voted, in a referendum, a lO-year moratorium on the 2 construction of new nuclear power plants. Moreover, plans to expand production of hydroelectric power (construction of new dams or expanding existing ones) have been stiffly opposed by environmental groups. These developments have consistently curtailed potential expansion of domestic electricity supply. As a result, Switzerland during the winter has to import electricity from foreign countries.

The theory of practical rationality does not belong to one academic discipline alone. There are quite divergent philosophical, economical, sociological, psychological and politological contributions. Sometimes the disciplinary boundaries impede theoretical progress. On the other hand it is an indication for the high complexity of the subject that so many divergent paradigms compete with one another, or - what is worse - live separately in a kind of splendid isolation. Decision theory in the broader sense, embracing the theory of games and collective choice theory, can help to understand practical reason in philosophical analysis. But there are interesting aspects which cannot be dealt with adequately within a decision-theoretic conceptual framework. To have both of these convictions justifies to neglect dis ciplinary boundaries and poses a problem for the orthodoxies of either sides. All the essays of this volume focus on the relation between economic rationality and practical reason and discuss different aspects of the same problem, i. e. a basic deficiency in the standard economic theory of practical rationality. But philosophical analysis would not be of much help if it just rejected the economic paradigm. It must rather help to integrate economic aspects into a broader view on practical reason."

Subject is the description of unvariate and multivariate business cycle stylized facts. A spectral analysis method (Maximum Entropy spectral estimation) novel in the analysis of economic time series is described and utilized. The method turns out to be superior to widely used time domain methods and the "classical" spectral estimate, the periodogram. The results for eleven OECD countries confirm and extend the basic set of stylized facts of traditional business cycle theory. The changing characteristics of the business cycle are analyzed by comparing the cyclical structure for the postwar and the prewar period. The results show that business cycle is mainly due to investment fluctuations.

This book presents an extensive survey of the theory and empirics of international parity conditions which are critical to our understanding of the linkages between world markets and the movement of interest and exchange rates across countries. The book falls into three parts dealing with the theory, methods of econometric testing and existing empirical evidence. Although it is intended to provide a consensus view on the subject, the authors also make some controversial propositions, particularly on the purchasing power parity conditions.

Arthur Vogt has devoted a great deal of his scientific efforts to both person and work of Irving Fisher. This book, written with J nos Barta, gives an excellent impression of Fisher's great contributions to the theory of the price index on the one hand. On the other hand, it continues Fisher's work on this subject along the lines which several authors drew with respect to price index theory since Fisher's death fifty years ago.
"This is a highly instructive book on both the history and theory of measurement in economics. It is rather a rich source of interesting properties of more or less well known indices and famous men, especially Irving Fisher, than a precise mathematical text on the axiomatic foundations of indices." ("From the Foreword by Wolfgang Eichhorn)"

What part does technological knowledge accumulation play in modern economic growth? This book investigates and examines the predictions of new growth theory, using OECD manufacturing data. Its empirical findings portray a novel and complex picture of the features of long-term growth, where technological knowledge production and diffusion play a central part, alongside variations in capital and employment. A parallel examination of long-run trade patterns and government policy issues completes a broader account of how knowledge-based growth in industrial output is at the heart of modern economic prosperity.

Major transport infrastructures are increasingly in the news as both the engineering and financing possibilities come together. However, these projects have also demonstrated the inadequacy of most existing approaches to forecasting their impacts and their overall evaluation. This collection of papers from a conference organised by the Applied Econometric Association represents a state of the art look at issues of forecasting traffic, developing pricing strategies and estimating the impacts in a set of papers by leading authorities from Europe, North America and Japan.

A collection of articles presented at the XLVI Applied Econometrics Association conference on exchange rates held in Heigerloch Castle, Germany), in 1995. The book consists of three parts examining the experience of the exchange rate in Europe. In the first part some aspects of exchange rate determination in Europe are examined; the second part deals with the exchange rate policy within the European Monetary System; in the third part an analysis of recent intervention practices in the European exchange rate markets is presented.

Population aging raises a number of issues regarding the optimality of public debt policy and the systems of public pension provisions that are in use in developed countries. The studies in this book address these questions using computable general equilibrium models. They give illuminating insights and new empirical estimates of future prospects of pay-as-you-go pension schemes in the "big seven" OECD countries, the possible distortions introduced by the pension systems in four large European economies, the effects of lifetime uncertainty in analyzing a potential reform of the Dutch pension system, effects of increasing international mobility of financial capital to pension policies, and public debt reduction policies in relation to possible adverse effects of taxation on wage formation and unemployment.

Major transport infrastructures are increasingly in the news as both the engineering and financing possibilities come together. However, these projects have also demonstrated the inadequacy of most existing approaches to forecasting their impacts and their overall evaluation. This collection of papers from a conference organized by the Association of d'Econometrie Appliquee represents a state of the art look at issues of forecasting traffic, developing pricing strategies and estimating the impacts in a set of papers by leading authorities from Europe, North America and Japan.

This book was born out of a five-years research at Sonderforschungsbe reich 303 by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitiit Bonn and was approved as my doctoral thesis by the Rechts-und Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultiit in December 1994. It was my former colleague Wolfgang Peters who had drawn my atten tion to overlapping-generations models and to problems of intergenerational efficiency and distribution. The subtle connection between the latter two has been fascinating me from the very beginning: redistribution of the results of free trade can become necessary from the point of view of efficiency, although no externalities hamper the development of an economy. In spite of being a matured part of economics, neoclassical growth theory had left many questions unsolved, some of them even unrecognized by a large part of our profession. I took up the challenge to contribute to the investigation of some of these thorny problems. One of these issues is the often quoted idea of the inter generational con tract. Although intergenerational transfers can improve intertemporal effi ciency, the design of pension schemes to achieve an improvement of well-being of some generations without hurting that of any other, is not an easy task in an economy with flexible prices. Quite frequently, only interest rate and growth rate are taken into account when deciding on whether a generation wins or looses."