Using seasonal climate forecasting in agriculture: a participatory decision-making approach

Farm Management,

Estimating Fiscal Multipliers: News From A Non-linear World

open4siCaggiano acknowledges the financial support received by the Visiting Research Scholar programme offered by the University of MelbourneWe estimate non-linear VARs to assess to what extent fiscal spending multipliers are countercyclical in the US. We deal with the issue of non-fundamentalness due to fiscal foresight by appealing to sums of revisions of expectations of fiscal expenditures. This measure of anticipated fiscal shocks is shown to carry valuable information about future dynamics of public spending. Results based on generalised impulse responses suggest that fiscal spending multipliers in recessions are greater than one, but not statistically larger than those in expansions. However, non-linearities arise when focusing on 'extreme' events, that is, deep recessions versus strong expansionary periods.openCaggiano, Giovanni; Castelnuovo, Efrem; Colombo, Valentina; Nodari, GabrielaCaggiano, Giovanni; Castelnuovo, Efrem; Colombo, Valentina; Nodari, Gabriel

The long road to improvement in modelling & managing engineering processes (MMEP)

Managing complex engineering design processes is a challenge for industry, which is looking to academia to provide tools and methods to support them. The Modelling and Managing of Engineering Processes Special Interest Group of the Design Society aims to support industry in understanding, modelling and running design processes by bringing together a community of design researchers and interacting with industry by identifying research challenges and working together to resolve them. This paper maps out research challenges for MMEP and reflects over some of the challenges we have as a research community in meeting these ambitious goals. This paper begins by presenting an ambitious research roadmap developed in 2008 and then compares the roadmap with the research topics that current members of the MMEP SIG are working on before reflecting on how and where we have made progress and what would be serious progress in this area. Based on the analyses of research topics and progress, the paper concludes with a discussion of the evolution of research topics and associated challenges for design research, and sketches measures required for improving our efficacy as a research community

Forecasting Inflation - A Case Study on the Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Slovakian and Slovenian Central Banks

The paper examines the inflation forecasting practice and the related institutional framework at the central banks of five Central European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia). The first part of the paper presents the general aspects of the comparative analysis, which primarily follow the requirements of inflation targeting monetary regimes. The second part consists of individual country case studies, which give detailed description of the institutional framework and forecasting practice at the five central banks considered.