Pitfalls In Estimating ß-Convergence By Means Of Panel Data: An Empirical Test

This paper aims to test the conjecture advanced in a recent work by Bianchi and Menegatti (2007) that usual !convergence panel regressions may produce biased evidence, due to their inability to distinguish between actual catching-up across countries and decreasing growth rates over time within countries. The test considers different sub-groups in a dataset of 72 countries for the period 1970-2000 and introduces both human capital and proxies for technological differences into the analysis. The results confirm the conjecture that traditional evidence about - convergence may be misleading; they also show that catching-up across countries is weaker than usually claimed and that this process occurred only in some sub-groups of countries.Catching-up, Convergence, Economic Growth, Panel Estimation Techniques.

Un Indicatore per la Lombardia e per le Province di Milano e Pavia (Nuova versione)

This paper aims to construct a high-frequency coincident indicator of economic activity for Lombardy and for the provinces of Milan and Pavia, by using the dynamic factor model approach introduced by Stock e Watson (1998a e 1998b). The principal component analysis is first used to summarize the information contained in a large dataset in a limited number of common factors capable of capturing the main features of local business fluctuations. The EM (Expectation Maximization) algorithm then allows to compute the desired territorial indicators by taking into account the official annual data on regional GDP or provincial valueadded growth

Un Indicatore di Attività Economica per la Lombardia e per le Province di Milano e Pavia

This paper aims to construct a high-frequency coincident indicator of economic activity for Lombardy and for the provinces of Milan and Pavia, by using the dynamic factor model approach introduced by Stock e Watson (1998a e 1998b). The principal component technique is first used to summarize the information contained in a large dataset in a limited number of common factors capable of capturing the main features of local business fluctuations. The EM (Expectation Maximization) algorithm then allows to compute the desired territorial indicators by taking into account the official annual data on regional GDP or provincial value-added growth

Rules versus discretion in fiscal policy

This paper purports to apply the Kydland-Prescott framework of dynamic inconsistency to the case of fiscal policy, by considering the trade-off between output and debt stabilization. The Government budget constraint provides the link between debt dynamics and the level of activity, influenced by fiscal policy. Contrary to what happens in the monetary policy framework, however, a commitment is not always superior to discretion, even in the absence of uncertainty, but only when the public debt-GDP ratio is sufficiently large. The introduction of uncertainty, as usual, implies a reduction in the net benefit generated by the adoption of a fixed rule

On the potential pitfalls in estimating convergence by means of pooled and panel data

We show that the use of pooled and panel data in estimating convergence across countries (or other territorial areas) may involve some pitfalls since this type of data cannot properly distinguish between actual convergence and the possibility of decreasing growth rates over time within each country (or geographical unit). We also show how the possible bias in the estimates can be eliminated

Un Indicatore per la Lombardia e per le Province di Milano e Pavia (Nuova versione)

This paper aims to construct a high-frequency coincident indicator of economic activity for Lombardy and for the provinces of Milan and Pavia, by using the dynamic factor model approach introduced by Stock e Watson (1998a e 1998b). The principal component analysis is first used to summarize the information contained in a large dataset in a limited number of common factors capable of capturing the main features of local business fluctuations. The EM (Expectation Maximization) algorithm then allows to compute the desired territorial indicators by taking into account the official annual data on regional GDP or provincial valueadded growth.Coincident Economic Activity Indicators, Italian Regions, Diffusion Indexes

Un Indicatore di Attività Economica per la Lombardia e per le Province di Milano e Pavia

This paper aims to construct a high-frequency coincident indicator of economic activity for Lombardy and for the provinces of Milan and Pavia, by using the dynamic factor model approach introduced by Stock e Watson (1998a e 1998b). The principal component technique is first used to summarize the information contained in a large dataset in a limited number of common factors capable of capturing the main features of local business fluctuations. The EM (Expectation Maximization) algorithm then allows to compute the desired territorial indicators by taking into account the official annual data on regional GDP or provincial value-added growth.Coincident Economic Activity Indicators, Italian Regions, Diffusion Indexes

Small Sample Properties of Copula-GARCH Modelling: A Monte Carlo Study

Copula-GARCH models have been recently proposed in the financial literature as a statistical tool to build flexible multivariate distributions. Our extensive simulation studies investigate the small sample properties of these models and examine how misspecification in the marginals may affect the estimation of the dependence function represented by the copula. We show that the use of normal marginals when the true Data Generating Process is leptokurtic or asymmetric, produces negatively biased estimates of the normal copula correlations. A striking result is that these biases reach their highest value when correlations are strongly negative, and viceversa. This result remains unchanged with both positively skewed and negatively skewed data, while no biases are found if the variables are uncorrelated. Besides, the effect of marginals asymmetry on correlations is smaller than that of leptokurtosis. We finally analyse the performance of these models in terms of numerical convergence and positive definiteness of the estimated copula correlation matrix.Copulas, Copula-GARCH models, Maximum Likelihood, Simulation, Small Sample Properties.

Pitfalls In Estimating ß-Convergence By Means Of Panel Data: An Empirical Test

This paper aims to test the conjecture advanced in a recent work by Bianchi and Menegatti (2007) that usual !convergence panel regressions may produce biased evidence, due to their inability to distinguish between actual catching-up across countries and decreasing growth rates over time within countries. The test considers different sub-groups in a dataset of 72 countries for the period 1970-2000 and introduces both human capital and proxies for technological differences into the analysis. The results confirm the conjecture that traditional evidence about - convergence may be misleading; they also show that catching-up across countries is weaker than usually claimed and that this process occurred only in some sub-groups of countries

A Copula-VAR-X Approach for Industrial Production Modelling and Forecasting

World economies, and especially European ones, have become strongly interconnected in the last decades and a joint modelling is required. We propose here the use of Copulas to build flexible multivariate distributions, since they allow for a rich dependence structure and more flexible marginal distributions that better fit the features of empirical data, such as leptokurtosis. We use our approach to forecast industrial production series in the core EMU countries and we provide evidence that the copula-VAR model outperforms or at worst compares similarly to normal VAR models, keeping the same computational tractability of the latter approach.Forecasting, Industrial Production, Copulas, VAR models.