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Impact of the UK general elections on total government expenditure cycles: theory and evidence
This paper presents a testable theoretical framework that extends the standard demand-side approach to modeling government expenditure on goods and services. The focus is on the adjustment of expenditure to disequilibria: we investigate whether the adjustment of UK exhaustive government expenditure between 1966 and 2002 to its long-run equilibrium path is symmetric. The evidence points to asymmetric adjustment to the demands of a representative voter over the election cycle but not between Labour and Conservative governments. Convergence to equilibrium is found to be faster during the later stages of each election cycle
Anchoring of Consumers’ Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Microdata
In this paper we explore the degree of anchoring of consumers' long-run inflation expectations. If expectations are firmly anchored, short- and long-run expectations should show no comovement in response to transitory shocks. Utilizing the University of Michigan Survey of Consumer's rotating panel microstructure, we can identify changes in inflation expectations of individual consumers over time. Our results indicate that long-run inflation expectations became more anchored over the last decades. While the degree of comovement fell significantly after 1996, the probability of a joint adjustment stayed constant. Regarding the possible determinants, we find that consumers' rising interest rate expectations and perceived news on the monetary policy stance have a detrimental effect on the anchoring of long-run expectations. This effect is no longer present in the post-1996 period. Notably, a positive effect of perceived news on government debt on the degree of comovement emerges after 1996, alluding to a potentially problematic link between fiscal and monetary policy
Unemployment expectations in an agent-based model with education
Why are unemployment expectations of the “man in the street” markedly different from professional forecasts? We present an agent-based model to explain this deep disconnection using boundedly rational agents with different levels of education. A good fit of empirical data is obtained under the assumptions that there is staggered update of information, agents update episodically their estimate and there is a fraction of households who always and stubbornly forecast that the unemployment is going to raise. The model also sheds light on the role of education and suggests that more educated agents update their information more often and less obstinately fixate on the worst possible forecast
Forecasting Private Consumption by Consumer Surveys
Survey-based indicators such as the consumer confidence are widely seen as leading indicators for economic activity, especially for the future path of private consumption. Although they receive high attention in the media, their forecasting power appears to be very limited. Therefore, this paper takes a fresh look on the survey data, which serve as a basis for the consumer confidence indicator (CCI) reported by the EU Commission for the euro area and individual member states. Different pooling methods are considered to exploit the information embedded in the consumer survey. Quantitative forecasts are based on Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) and bridge equations. While the CCI does not outperform an autoregressive benchmark for the majority of countries, the new indicators increase the forecasting performance. The gains over the CCI are striking for Italy and the entire euro area (20 percent). For Germany and France the gains seem to be lower, but are nevertheless substantial (10 to 15 percent). The best performing indicator should be built upon pre-selection methods, while data-driven aggregation methods should be preferred to determine the weights of the individual ingredients
Multicentre phase II studies evaluating imatinib plus hydroxyurea in patients with progressive glioblastoma
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79699.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)BACKGROUND: We evaluated the efficacy of imatinib mesylate in addition to hydroxyurea in patients with recurrent glioblastoma (GBM) who were either on or not on enzyme-inducing anti-epileptic drugs (EIAEDs). METHODS: A total of 231 patients with GBM at first recurrence from 21 institutions in 10 countries were enrolled. All patients received 500 mg of hydroxyurea twice a day. Imatinib was administered at 600 mg per day for patients not on EIAEDs and at 500 mg twice a day if on EIAEDs. The primary end point was radiographic response rate and secondary end points were safety, progression-free survival at 6 months (PFS-6), and overall survival (OS). RESULTS: The radiographic response rate after centralised review was 3.4%. Progression-free survival at 6 months and median OS were 10.6% and 26.0 weeks, respectively. Outcome did not appear to differ based on EIAED status. The most common grade 3 or greater adverse events were fatigue (7%), neutropaenia (7%), and thrombocytopaenia (7%). CONCLUSIONS: Imatinib in addition to hydroxyurea was well tolerated among patients with recurrent GBM but did not show clinically meaningful anti-tumour activity
Expectations and Uncertainty: A Common-Source Infection Model for Selected European Countries
We present a common-source infection model for explaining the formation of expectations by households. Starting from the framework of "Macroeconomic expectations of household and professional forecasters" (C.D. Carroll, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2003), we augment the original model assuming that also uninformed individuals are able to update expectations according to a naive econometric process. In this novel framework, a key role is played by the parameter measuring the prob- ability of being informed: the dynamics of this factor over time capture the level of uncertainty perceived by households. This new framework is applied to study unemployment expectations for a selected group of European countries (France, Germany, Italy and the UK). Our results show that: (i) the novel framework is supported by data on unemployment expectations; and (ii) the probability of being informed is (negatively) correlated with the level of uncertainty spread by newspapers and conveyed by Internet
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