Is the euro advantageous? Does it foster European feelings? Europeans on the euro after five years

The introduction of the euro as a currency in physical existence in January 2002 was a major step in the European integration process. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a representative selection of 12 000 Europeans across all countries in the euro area view the effects of the euro five years after its introduction. The empirical analysis uses multinomial logistic regressions to explore the responses to two questions from the Flash Eurobarometer survey conducted in September 2006. The first question asked if the adoption of the euro was advantageous overall or not. The second one asked if using the euro had made you personally feel a little more European than before or not.Jonung, Conflitti, 978-92-79-08238-2, European integration, euro, EU, public attitudes, opinion polls, multinomial logistic regression.

Essays on the econometrics of macroeconomic survey data

This thesis contains three essays covering different topics in the field of statistics<p>and econometrics of survey data. Chapters one and two analyse two aspects<p>of the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF hereafter) dataset. This survey<p>provides a large information on macroeconomic expectations done by the professional<p>forecasters and offers an opportunity to exploit a rich information set.<p>But it poses a challenge on how to extract the relevant information in a proper<p>way. The last chapter addresses the issue of analyzing the opinions on the euro<p>reported in the Flash Eurobaromenter dataset.<p>The first chapter Measuring Uncertainty and Disagreement in the European<p>Survey of Professional Forecasters proposes a density forecast methodology based<p>on the piecewise linear approximation of the individual’s forecasting histograms,<p>to measure uncertainty and disagreement of the professional forecasters. Since<p>1960 with the introduction of the SPF in the US, it has been clear that they were a<p>useful source of information to address the issue on how to measure disagreement<p>and uncertainty, without relying on macroeconomic or time series models. Direct<p>measures of uncertainty are seldom available, whereas many surveys report point<p>forecasts from a number of individual respondents. There has been a long tradition<p>of using measures of the dispersion of individual respondents’ point forecasts<p>(disagreement or consensus) as proxies for uncertainty. Unlike other surveys, the<p>SPF represents an exception. It directly asks for the point forecast, and for the<p>probability distribution, in the form of histogram, associated with the macro variables<p>of interest. An important issue that should be considered concerns how to<p>approximate individual probability densities and get accurate individual results<p>for disagreement and uncertainty before computing the aggregate measures. In<p>contrast to Zarnowitz and Lambros (1987), and Giordani and Soderlind (2003) we<p>overcome the problem associated with distributional assumptions of probability<p>density forecasts by using a non parametric approach that, instead of assuming<p>a functional form for the individual probability law, approximates the histogram<p>by a piecewise linear function. In addition, and unlike earlier works that focus on<p>US data, we employ European data, considering gross domestic product (GDP),<p>inflation and unemployment.<p>The second chapter Optimal Combination of Survey Forecasts is based on<p>a joint work with Christine De Mol and Domenico Giannone. It proposes an<p>approach to optimally combine survey forecasts, exploiting the whole covariance<p>structure among forecasters. There is a vast literature on forecast combination<p>methods, advocating their usefulness both from the theoretical and empirical<p>points of view (see e.g. the recent review by Timmermann (2006)). Surprisingly,<p>it appears that simple methods tend to outperform more sophisticated ones, as<p>shown for example by Genre et al. (2010) on the combination of the forecasts in<p>the SPF conducted by the European Central Bank (ECB). The main conclusion of<p>several studies is that the simple equal-weighted average constitutes a benchmark<p>that is hard to improve upon. In contrast to a great part of the literature which<p>does not exploit the correlation among forecasters, we take into account the full<p>covariance structure and we determine the optimal weights for the combination<p>of point forecasts as the minimizers of the mean squared forecast error (MSFE),<p>under the constraint that these weights are nonnegative and sum to one. We<p>compare our combination scheme with other methodologies in terms of forecasting<p>performance. Results show that the proposed optimal combination scheme is an<p>appropriate methodology to combine survey forecasts.<p>The literature on point forecast combination has been widely developed, however<p>there are fewer studies analyzing the issue for combination density forecast.<p>We extend our work considering the density forecasts combination. Moving from<p>the main results presented in Hall and Mitchell (2007), we propose an iterative<p>algorithm for computing the density weights which maximize the average logarithmic<p>score over the sample period. The empirical application is made for the<p>European GDP and inflation forecasts. Results suggest that optimal weights,<p>obtained via an iterative algorithm outperform the equal-weighted used by the<p>ECB density combinations.<p>The third chapter entitled Opinion surveys on the euro: a multilevel multinomial<p>logistic analysis outlines the multilevel aspects related to public attitudes<p>toward the euro. This work was motivated by the on-going debate whether the<p>perception of the euro among European citizenships after ten years from its introduction<p>was positive or negative. The aim of this work is, therefore, to disentangle<p>the issue of public attitudes considering either individual socio-demographic characteristics<p>and macroeconomic features of each country, counting each of them<p>as two separate levels in a single analysis. Considering a hierarchical structure<p>represents an advantage as it models within-country as well as between-country<p>relations using a single analysis. The multilevel analysis allows the consideration<p>of the existence of dependence between individuals within countries induced by<p>unobserved heterogeneity between countries, i.e. we include in the estimation<p>specific country characteristics not directly observable. In this chapter we empirically<p>investigate which individual characteristics and country specificities are<p>most important and affect the perception of the euro. The attitudes toward the<p>euro vary across individuals and countries, and are driven by personal considerations<p>based on the benefits and costs of using the single currency. Individual<p>features, such as a high level of education or living in a metropolitan area, have<p>a positive impact on the perception of the euro. Moreover, the country-specific<p>economic condition can influence individuals attitudes.Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

New facts on consumer price rigidity in the euro area

Summary of Banco de España Working Paper no. 222

New facts on consumer price rigidity in the euro area

Usando microdatos del IPC para 11 países del área del euro, que representan el 60 % de la cesta europea de consumo durante el período 2010-2019, documentamos nuevos resultados sobre rigidez de precios en el área del euro: i) cada mes, en promedio, el 12,3 % de los precios sufren cambios, en comparación con un 19,3 % en Estados Unidos; cuando excluimos cambios debidos a descuentos, sin embargo, la proporción de precios que se ajustan cada mes cae al 8,5 % en el área del euro, y es del 10 % en Estados Unidos; ii) existen pocas diferencias en rigideces de precios entre los distintos países, y estas son mayores entre sectores; iii) la mediana de la distribución de incrementos (descensos) de precio es del 9,6 % (13 %) incluyendo descuentos y del 6,7 % (8,7 %) excluyéndolos; la heterogeneidad entre países es más pronunciada en el tamaño del cambio de precios que en la frecuencia del cambio; iv) la distribución de cambios de precio tiene una alta dispersión: el 14 % de los cambios de precio en valor absoluto son menores del 2 % y el 10 % exceden el 20 %; v) la frecuencia de cambios de precio apenas cambia con la inflación y responde muy poco a perturbaciones agregadas, y vi) cambios en la inflación vienen mayormente determinados por movimientos en el tamaño del cambio de precios; si descomponemos este efecto, los cambios en la proporción de incrementos de precio tienen mayor peso que los cambios en el tamaño de estos y que en el tamaño de las disminuciones de precio. Estos resultados son coherentes con las predicciones de un modelo de costes de menú en un contexto de baja inflación en el que las perturbaciones idiosincrásicas son más relevantes que las perturbaciones agregadas para explicar los ajustes de precios.Using CPI micro data for 11 euro area countries, covering 60% of the European consumption basket over the period 2010-2019, we document new findings on consumer price rigidity in the euro area: (i) on average 12.3% of prices change each month, compared with 19.3% in the United States; however, when price changes due to sales are excluded, the proportion of prices adjusted each month is 8.5% in the euro area versus 10% in the United States; (ii) the differences in price rigidity are rather limited across euro area countries and are larger across sectors; (iii) the median price increase (decrease) is 9.6% (13%) when including sales and 6.7% (8.7%) when excluding sales; cross-country heterogeneity is more pronounced for the size of the price change than for the frequency; (iv) the distribution of price changes is highly dispersed: 14% of price changes are below 2% in absolute values, whereas 10% are above 20%; (v) the frequency of price changes barely changes with inflation and it responds very little to aggregate shocks; (vi) changes in inflation are mostly driven by movements in the overall size of the price change; when this effect is broken down, variations in the share of price increases have a greater weight than changes in the size of the price increase or in the size of the price decrease. These findings are consistent with the predictions of a menu cost model in a low-inflation environment in which idiosyncratic shocks are a more relevant driver of price adjustments than aggregate shocks

Discovery of a Potent and Orally Active Dual GPBAR1/CysLT1R Modulator for the Treatment of Metabolic Fatty Liver Disease

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are two highly prevalent human diseases caused by excessive fat deposition in the liver. Although multiple approaches have been suggested, NAFLD/NASH remains an unmet clinical need. Here, we report the discovery of a novel class of hybrid molecules designed to function as cysteinyl leukotriene receptor 1 (CysLT1R) antagonists and G protein bile acid receptor 1 (GPBAR1/TGR5) agonists for the treatment of NAFLD/NASH. The most potent of these compounds generated by harnessing the scaffold of the previously described CystLT1R antagonists showed efficacy in reversing liver histopathology features in a preclinical model of NASH, reshaping the liver transcriptome and the lipid and energy metabolism in the liver and adipose tissues. In summary, the present study described a novel orally active dual CysLT1R antagonist/GPBAR1 agonist that effectively protects against the development of NAFLD/NASH, showing promise for further development

Measuring Uncertainty and Disagreement in the European Survey and Professional Forecasters

Survey data on expectations and economic forecasts play an important role in providing better insights into how economic agents make their own forecasts, what factors do affect the accuracy of these forecasts and why agents disagree in making them. Uncertainty is also important for better understanding many areas of economic behavior. Several approaches to measure uncertainty and disagreement have been proposed but a lack of direct observations and information on uncertainty and disagreement lead to ambiguous definitions of these two concepts. Using data from the European Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), which provide forecast point estimates and probability density forecasts, we consider several measures of uncertainty and disagreement at both aggregate and individual level. We overcome the problem associated with distributional assumptions of probability density forecasts by using an approach that does not assume any functional form for the individual probability densities but just approximating the histogram by a piecewise linear function. We extend earlier works to the European context for the three macroeconomic variables: GDP, inflation and unemployment. Moreover, we analyze how these measures perform with respect to different forecasting horizons. Looking at point estimates and disregarding the individual probability information provides misestimates of disagreement and uncertainty. Comparing the three macroeconomic variables of interest, uncertainty and disagreement are higher for GDP and inflation than unemployment, at short and long horizons. Besides this, it is difficult to find a common behavior between uncertainty and disagreement among the variables: results do not support evidence that, if uncertainty or disagreement are relatively high for one of the variable than it is the same for the othersinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Opinion Surveys on the Euro: a Multilevel Multinomial Logistic Analysis

The main contribution of the paper is to identify the socio economic characteristics that affect the perception of the euro across the original 12 Euro Area countries by specifying and estimating a multilevel multinomial model for polytomous data. The analysis is based on the Flash Eurobarometer dataset that contains cross-country data augmented speci?c country macroeconomic and political series. The use of the multilevel multinomial logistic regression allows to estimate the model considering individuals features and countries characteristics in a single analysis with two-level structure. This structure takes into account dependence between individuals within the same country given a certain component of unobserved heterogeneity between countries. The attitudes towards the euro vary across individuals and across countries and are driven by personal considerations based on the bene?ts and costs of using a single currency within a common area. Individual features, as a high level of education and living in a metropolitan area, have a positive impact towards the perception of the euro, since people having these characteristics can bene?t more from new markets opportunities created by the common area. Moreover, a positive country economic context (low in?ation and high growth) can in?uence people attitudes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Essays on the econometrics of macroeconomic survey data

This thesis contains three essays covering different topics in the field of statisticsand econometrics of survey data. Chapters one and two analyse two aspectsof the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF hereafter) dataset. This surveyprovides a large information on macroeconomic expectations done by the professionalforecasters and offers an opportunity to exploit a rich information set.But it poses a challenge on how to extract the relevant information in a properway. The last chapter addresses the issue of analyzing the opinions on the euroreported in the Flash Eurobaromenter dataset.The first chapter Measuring Uncertainty and Disagreement in the EuropeanSurvey of Professional Forecasters proposes a density forecast methodology basedon the piecewise linear approximation of the individual’s forecasting histograms,to measure uncertainty and disagreement of the professional forecasters. Since1960 with the introduction of the SPF in the US, it has been clear that they were auseful source of information to address the issue on how to measure disagreementand uncertainty, without relying on macroeconomic or time series models. Directmeasures of uncertainty are seldom available, whereas many surveys report pointforecasts from a number of individual respondents. There has been a long traditionof using measures of the dispersion of individual respondents’ point forecasts(disagreement or consensus) as proxies for uncertainty. Unlike other surveys, theSPF represents an exception. It directly asks for the point forecast, and for theprobability distribution, in the form of histogram, associated with the macro variablesof interest. An important issue that should be considered concerns how toapproximate individual probability densities and get accurate individual resultsfor disagreement and uncertainty before computing the aggregate measures. Incontrast to Zarnowitz and Lambros (1987), and Giordani and Soderlind (2003) weovercome the problem associated with distributional assumptions of probabilitydensity forecasts by using a non parametric approach that, instead of assuminga functional form for the individual probability law, approximates the histogramby a piecewise linear function. In addition, and unlike earlier works that focus onUS data, we employ European data, considering gross domestic product (GDP),inflation and unemployment.The second chapter Optimal Combination of Survey Forecasts is based ona joint work with Christine De Mol and Domenico Giannone. It proposes anapproach to optimally combine survey forecasts, exploiting the whole covariancestructure among forecasters. There is a vast literature on forecast combinationmethods, advocating their usefulness both from the theoretical and empiricalpoints of view (see e.g. the recent review by Timmermann (2006)). Surprisingly,it appears that simple methods tend to outperform more sophisticated ones, asshown for example by Genre et al. (2010) on the combination of the forecasts inthe SPF conducted by the European Central Bank (ECB). The main conclusion ofseveral studies is that the simple equal-weighted average constitutes a benchmarkthat is hard to improve upon. In contrast to a great part of the literature whichdoes not exploit the correlation among forecasters, we take into account the fullcovariance structure and we determine the optimal weights for the combinationof point forecasts as the minimizers of the mean squared forecast error (MSFE),under the constraint that these weights are nonnegative and sum to one. Wecompare our combination scheme with other methodologies in terms of forecastingperformance. Results show that the proposed optimal combination scheme is anappropriate methodology to combine survey forecasts.The literature on point forecast combination has been widely developed, howeverthere are fewer studies analyzing the issue for combination density forecast.We extend our work considering the density forecasts combination. Moving fromthe main results presented in Hall and Mitchell (2007), we propose an iterativealgorithm for computing the density weights which maximize the average logarithmicscore over the sample period. The empirical application is made for theEuropean GDP and inflation forecasts. Results suggest that optimal weights,obtained via an iterative algorithm outperform the equal-weighted used by theECB density combinations.The third chapter entitled Opinion surveys on the euro: a multilevel multinomiallogistic analysis outlines the multilevel aspects related to public attitudestoward the euro. This work was motivated by the on-going debate whether theperception of the euro among European citizenships after ten years from its introductionwas positive or negative. The aim of this work is, therefore, to disentanglethe issue of public attitudes considering either individual socio-demographic characteristicsand macroeconomic features of each country, counting each of themas two separate levels in a single analysis. Considering a hierarchical structurerepresents an advantage as it models within-country as well as between-countryrelations using a single analysis. The multilevel analysis allows the considerationof the existence of dependence between individuals within countries induced byunobserved heterogeneity between countries, i.e. we include in the estimationspecific country characteristics not directly observable. In this chapter we empiricallyinvestigate which individual characteristics and country specificities aremost important and affect the perception of the euro. The attitudes toward theeuro vary across individuals and countries, and are driven by personal considerationsbased on the benefits and costs of using the single currency. Individualfeatures, such as a high level of education or living in a metropolitan area, havea positive impact on the perception of the euro. Moreover, the country-specificeconomic condition can influence individuals attitudes.Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Measuring Uncertainty and Disagreement in the European Survey of Professional Forecasters

Survey data on expectations and economic forecasts play an important role in providing better insights into how economic agents make their own forecasts and why agents disagree in making them. Using data from the European Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), we consider measures of uncertainty and disagreement at both aggregate and individual level. We overcome the problem associated with distributional assumptions of probability density forecasts by using an approach that does not assume any functional form for the individual probability densities but just approximates the histogram by a piecewise linear function. We extend earlier works to the European context for the three macroeconomic variables – GDP, inflation and unemployment – and we analyse how these measures perform with respect to different forecasting horizons. There are two main results. First, uncertainty and disagreement are higher for GDP and unemployment than inflation, in particular for the short and medium forecast horizons. Second, the results do not support the evidence that, if uncertainty or disagreement are relatively high for one variable, then it is the same for the others. JEL classification: C53, E37, C83. Keywords: Survey professional forecast, uncertainty, disagreement, probability distribution.

Opinion Surveys on the Euro: a Multilevel Multinomial Logistic Analysis

The main contribution of the paper is to identify the socio economic characteristics that affect the perception of the euro across the original 12 Euro Area countries by specifying and estimating a multilevel multinomial model for polytomous data. The analysis is based on the Flash Eurobarometer dataset that contains cross-country data augmented speci?c country macroeconomic and political series. The use of the multilevel multinomial logistic regression allows to estimate the model considering individuals features and countries characteristics in a single analysis with two-level structure. This structure takes into account dependence between individuals within the same country given a certain component of unobserved heterogeneity between countries. The attitudes towards the euro vary across individuals and across countries and are driven by personal considerations based on the bene?ts and costs of using a single currency within a common area. Individual features, as a high level of education and living in a metropolitan area, have a positive impact towards the perception of the euro, since people having these characteristics can bene?t more from new markets opportunities created by the common area. Moreover, a positive country economic context (low in?ation and high growth) can in?uence people attitudes.Public attitudes; opinion surveys; European integration; multilevel modeling; gllamm.