Is there a Common European Business Cycle? New Insights from a Frequency Domain Analysis

To assess the synchronization of business cycles in Europe we extract the cyclical component of industrial production in five European countries using the filter of Baxter and King (1999). The hypothesis of a joint business cycle is tested by using the frequency domain common cycle test suggested by Breitung and Candelon (2000). The common cycle hypothesis is clearly rejected for U.K. data whereas some weak evidence for a joint cyclical pattern is found for France, The Netherlands, Austria and Germany. Zusammenfassung Gibt es einen gemeinsamen europäischen Konjunkturzyklus? Neue Erkenntnisse durch eine Spektralanalyse Um die Synchronität der Konjunkturzyklen in Europa zu bewerten, wird die Zykluskomponente der Industrieproduktion in fünf europäischen Ländern identifiziert, indem der Baxter-King-Filter (1999) angewendet wird. Die Hypothese eines gemeinsamen Konjunkturzyklus wird durch einen Test auf einen gemeinsamen Zyklus im Frequenzbereich nach Breitung und Candelon (2000) überprüft. Ein gemeinsamer Konjunkturzyklus muss demnach für Großbritannien klar zurückgewiesen werden, wohingegen einige schwache Anzeichen für ein gemeinsames Konjunkturmuster für Frankreich, die Niederlande, Österreich und Deutschland gefunden werden konnten

Modelling Opportunity Cost Effects in Money Demand due to Openness

We apply a novel model-based approach to constructing composite international financial indices (CIFIs) as measures of opportunity cost effects that arise due to openness in money demand models. These indices are tested on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan Province of China (TPC), two economies which differ substantially in size and degree of financial openness. Results show that (a) stable money demand equations can be identified if accounting for foreign opportunity costs through CIFIs, (b) the monetary policy intervention in the PRC over the global financial crisis period temporarily mitigated disequilibrating foreign shocks to money demand, (c) CIFIs capture opportunity costs due to openness more adequately than commonly used US interest rates and (d) CIFI construction provides valuable insights into the channels through which foreign financial markets affect domestic money demand

Modelling Opportunity Cost Effects in Money Demand due to Openness

We apply a novel model-based approach to constructing composite international financial indices (CIFIs) as measures of opportunity cost effects that arise due to openness in money demand models. These indices are tested on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan Province of China (TPC), two economies which differ substantially in size and degree of financial openness. Results show that (a) stable money demand equations can be identified if accounting for foreign opportunity costs through CIFIs, (b) the monetary policy intervention in the PRC over the global financial crisis period temporarily mitigated disequilibrating foreign shocks to money demand, (c) CIFIs capture opportunity costs due to openness more adequately than commonly used US interest rates and (d) CIFI construction provides valuable insights into the channels through which foreign financial markets affect domestic money demand

The impact of customer-specific marketing expenses on customer retention and customer profitability

We study the effects of customer-specific marketing expenses on customer retention and customer profitability in a business-to-business setting. Using data from a company providing hygiene services, we look at the impact of a hitherto unstudied type of expense targeted at individual customer relationships: the offering of free equipment to customers. The data allow tracking the activities performed in more than 4,500 customer relationships over a period of 4 years. Retention rates are higher for customers targeted with free equipment, but this effect results from an interaction with customer size. First-order dynamic panel data analyses show that the impact of targeted marketing expenses on customer dollar profit is positive for large customers, but there is no effect for smaller customers. Thus, targeted marketing expenses seem to be a tool for relationship maintenance rather than customer development: they help in retaining large customers that generate more profit, but they do not seem to work in developing new customers into larger, more profitable ones

Endogeneity in Panel Data Models with Time-Varying and Time-Fixed Regressors: To IV or Not IV?

We analyse the problem of parameter inconsistency in panel data econometrics due to the correlation of exogenous variables with the error term. A common solution in this setting is to use Instrumental-Variable (IV) estimation in the spirit of Hausman-Taylor (1981). However, some potential shortcomings of the latter approach recently gave rise to the use of non-IV two-step estimators. Given their growing number of empirical applications, we aim to systematically compare the performance of IV and non-IV approaches in the presence of time-fixed variables and right hand side endogeneity using Monte Carlo simulations, where we explicitly control for the problem of IV selection in the Hausman-Taylor case. The simulation results show that the Hausman- Taylor model with perfect-knowledge about the underlying data structure (instrument orthogonality) has on average the smallest bias. However, compared to the empirically relevant specification with imperfect-knowledge and instruments chosen by statistical criteria, the non-IV rival performs equally well or even better especially in terms of estimating variable coefficients for time- fixed regressors. Moreover, the non-IV method tends to have a smaller root mean square error (rmse) than both Hausman-Taylor models with perfect and imperfect knowledge about the underlying correlation between r.h.s variables and residual term. This indicates that it is generally more efficient. The results are roughly robust for various combinations in the time and cross-section dimension of the data