Business Survey Data: Do They Help in Forecasting the Macro Economy?

In this paper we examine whether data from business tendency surveys are useful for forecasting the macro economy in the short run. Our analyses primarily concern the growth rates of real GDP but we also evaluate forecasts of other variables such as unemployment, price and wage inflation, interest rates, and exchange-rate changes. The starting point is a so-called dynamic factor model (DFM), which is used both as a framework for dimension reduction in forecasting and as a procedure for filtering out unimportant idiosyncratic noise in the underlying survey data. In this way, it is possible to model a rather large number of noise-reduced survey variables in a parsimoniously parameterised vector autoregression (VAR). To assess the forecasting performance of the procedure, comparisons are made with VARs that either use the survey variables directly, are based on macro variables only, or use other popular summary indices of economic activity. As concerns forecasts of GDP growth, the procedure turns out to outperform the competing alternatives in most cases. For the other macro variables, the evidence is more mixed, suggesting in particular that there often is little difference between the DFM-based indicators and the popular summary indices of economic activity.Business survey data; Dynamic factor models; Macroeconomic forecasting

Investeringseffektiviteten i svenska lantbruksföretag

Ett Lantbruksföretag som vill investera eller konsolidera kräver olika strategier för hur de skall gå till väga när de placerar sitt resultat. Men hur ser företagarnas strategier ut för hur de placerar sitt resultat från verksamheten? Studien syftar till att undersöka hur företagare resonerar kring sina placeringar av resultat från verksamheten och hur väl deras tänkta strategi stämmer överens med vad som skett i företagets ekonomi under en 10 års period. För att undersöka detta har studien använt sig av både intervjuer och kassaflödesanalyser. Kassaflödesanalys har genomförts på varje år som är med i analysen för att sedan kunna sammanställa dessa till olika nyckeltal som visar utvecklingen på företagen och effekterna av hur resultatet har placerats. Intervjuerna syftar till att undersöka hur företagarna själva uppfattar att de har placerat sina resultat och sedan att efter analysen presenterats reflektera hur pass väl de själva har följt sin tänkta strategi. Att ha en strategi och följa den är en viktig faktor för att kunna utvärdera och utveckla sitt agerande. Studiens resultat visar på att lantbruksföretag har en tendens att tappa produktivitet vid expansion av verksamheten. Alla företagare som studien har berört har haft en god uppfattning om hur de valt att placera sina resultat. De har däremot haft en betydligt mer varierande uppfattning om hur effektiva eller ineffektiva deras placeringar varit.A farm business that wants to invest or consolidate need different strategies for how they are going to place the profits from their business. But what does the business owners’ strategies for placement of their profits look like? The study aims to investigate how farm business owners’ reason when they place their profits from the business and how well their strategies coincide with how they have placed their profits during the last 10 years. In order to investigate this the study have used both interviews and cash flow analysis. A cash flow analysis has been done on each year of the 10 years of bookkeeping that has been provided, after that the data has been compiled into various key ratios that show the businesses different development, and the effects of the choice of placement for the profits. The interviews has been performed in order to try and see if there are any differences in how the owners perceive how they have placed their profits and how they actually have placed them. To have a strategy for how to place your profits is key to being able to evaluate and improve on your strategy. The study has concluded that farm businesses have a tendency to lose some productivity when expanding their business. All the farm business owners that has been included in this study has good knowledge on how they have placed their profits. They did on the other hand not have as good knowledge of how effective or noneffective their placements have been

MAOA haplotypes associated with thrombocyte-MAO activity

BACKGROUND: The aim was to ascertain whether thrombocyte MAO (trbc-MAO) activity and depressed state are genetically associated with the MAO locus on chromosome X (Xp11.3 – 11.4). We performed novel sequencing of the MAO locus and validated genetic variants found in public databases prior to constructing haplotypes of the MAO locus in a Swedish sample (N = 573 individuals). RESULTS: Our results reveal a profound SNP desert in the MAOB gene. Both the MAOA and MAOB genes segregate as two distinct LD blocks. We found a significant association between two MAOA gene haplotypes and reduced trbc-MAO activity, but no association with depressed state. CONCLUSION: The MAO locus seems to have an effect on trbc-MAO activity in the study population. The findings suggest incomplete X-chromosome inactivation at this locus. It is plausible that a gene-dosage effect can provide some insight into the greater prevalence of depressed state in females than males

Genetic studies of depressive symptoms

This thesis is focused on depressive symptoms particularly in late fife. Depressive symptoms are associated with serious negative outcomes a greater level of disability and with excess morbidity and mortality. This thesis includes a series of studies that explore the importance of genetic components on current and past depressive symptoms in a large sub-sample of the Swedish Twin Registry. More specifically gender differences, genetic risk factors, and the role of some genetic variants of candidate genes in the serotonergic system were investigated. The relative importance of genetic and environmental variance components for depressive symptoms was investigated by means of a twin design. The sex specific heritability estimates (b2) for depressive symptom-, were 14% for males and 29% for females and 23% when constrained to be equal across the sexes. The prevalence of the dichotomous depressed mood variable was 16%. for men and 24% for women with corresponding heritability estimates of 7% for males and 49% for females in the full model and 33% in the best fitting (AE) model constrained to be equal across sexes. These results show that depressive symptoms and depressed mood in the elderly are heritable, with an indication of a higher heritability for women than men. The novel real-time sequencing method, Pyrosequencing - was evaluated for genotyping of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and the first large-scale effort at genotyping using this method was performed. Pyrosequencing genotypes were validated through duplicate analysis of 1022 genotypes against the TaqMan® 5'-nuclease assays. The Pyrosequencing method was highly efficient, robust and accurate in the analysis of SNPs. The serotonergic system is profoundly associated with mood disorders and there are several serotonergic functions that could contribute to symptoms of depression. Associations between depressed mood and polymorphic variants in the HTR2A gene and the SLC6A4 gene in a sample of 1592 twins were investigated. An increased risk (OR = 2.4) for depressed mood in males associated with a genetic variant of the HTR2A gene was found. These findings might be indicative of a gender difference in the generic composition of depressive symptoms. Monoamine oxidases deaminate biogenic amines like serotonin. The two different forms of the enzyme, MAOA and MAOB are both encoded by genes on the X chromosome. A linkage disequilibrium (LD) map was created by use of nine SNPs to determine the LD structure of the MAO locus. The locus holds two distinct LD blocks, one for each gene, with very few haplotype variants. There was an association with haplotype variants of the MAOA gene and trbc-MAO activity. However, there was no association between either, MAOA or MAOB with depressive symptoms, but an interesting additive effect was observed in females. Thus, this thesis has demonstrated that genetic variance is important for variation in depressive symptoms and that this variation appears to differ for men and women. Variants of the HTR2A receptor are associated with depressed mood in men but not women. Haplotypes of the MAOA gene are associated with levels of trbc-MAO activity but there was no clear association between variants of the MAO locus with depressive symptoms. Nonetheless, an increased number of symptoms were found with increasing numbers of alleles of certain haplotypes

Business Survey Data: Do They Help in Forecasting the Macro Economy?

In this paper we examine whether data from business tendency surveys are useful for forecasting the macro economy in the short run. Our analyses primarily concern the growth rates of real GDP but we also evaluate forecasts of other variables such as unemployment, price and wage inflation, interest rates, and exchange-rate changes. The starting point is a so-called dynamic factor model (DFM), which is used both as a framework for dimension reduction in forecasting and as a procedure for filtering out unimportant idiosyncratic noise in the underlying survey data. In this way, it is possible to model a rather large number of noise-reduced survey variables in a parsimoniously parameterised vector autoregression (VAR). To assess the forecasting performance of the procedure, comparisons are made with VARs that either use the survey variables directly, are based on macro variables only, or use other popular summary indices of economic activity. As concerns forecasts of GDP growth, the procedure turns out to outperform the competing alternatives in most cases. For the other macro variables, the evidence is more mixed, suggesting in particular that there often is little difference between the DFM-based indicators and the popular summary indices of economic activity.Business survey data; Dynamic factor models; Macroeconomic forecasting

Expression of Helix pomatia Lectin Binding Glycoproteins in Women with Breast Cancer in Relationship to Their Mood Group Phenotypes

Aberrant glycosylation occurs in essentially all types of human cancers. A difference in glycopattern of proteins will result in a change of function of the proteins. The lectin from Helix pomatia (HPA) recognizes N-acetylgalactosaminylated glycoproteins and very consistent results over the increased binding of HPA in tissue sections are associated with metastasis progression and poor patient prognosis in a range of human adenocarcinomas. The induced modification of protein function after changed glycosylation is unknown, and as a part in characterizing the glycoproteins carrying the specific carbohydrates, we analyzed the major HPA binding proteins in sera from healthy women, women with primary breast cancer with no metastasis (bcmet-), and women with metastasizing breast cancer (bcmet+) using lectin affinity chromatography and lectin blotting. The binding ligands were further identified using mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) to confirm the captured glycoproteins. The major HPA binding proteins in serum were found to be IgA1, complement factor C3, von Willebrand factor (vWF), alpha-2-macroglobulin and IgM. This set of antigens is a panel of candidates for useful HPA related biomarkers in sera, but our results also emphasize the fact that the blood group phenotypes are of most importance when using the lectin HPA in recognition of cancer biomarkers in sera and plasma. The results emphasize that interpretation of an individual change in the glycosylation pattern of a specific tumor marker always needs to be analyzed in its right context. This study shows that the blood group phenotypes can have a major impact on the results when analyzing HPA lectin binding