Evaluating the German Inventory Cycle Using Data from the Ifo Business Survey

Inventory fluctuations are an important phenomenon in business cycles. However, the preliminary data on inventory investment as published in the German national accounts are tremendously prone to revision and therefore ill-equipped to diagnose the current stance of the inventory cycle. The Ifo business survey contains information on the assessments of inventory stocks in manufacturing as well as in retail andwholesale trade. Static factor analysis anda methodbuild ing on canonical correlations are appliedto construct a composite index of inventory fluctuations. Based on recursive estimates, the different variants are assessedas regards the stability of the weighting schemes andthe ability to forecast the "true" inventory fluctuations better than the preliminary official releases. --inventory investment,revisions,composite indices,canonical correlation,factor models,national accounts data,Ifo business survey,Germany

Supply-side effects of strong energy price hikes in German industry and transportation

The paper studies the short-term effects of energy price hikes on the supply of industrial goods and transport services including the repercussions on remuneration of input factors. While industry had suffered more strongly from the oil price shock of the late 1970s compared with the one of the early 1970s and the 2004-08 upsurge, evidence is reverse for transportation. Regarding the impact on the income distribution, both sectors share the pattern that in the recent episode rising energy costs were more than compensated by falling unit labor costs while in the 1970s cost structures had been strained by expansive wage policy in addition to the oil price shocks. --Energy prices,supply of goods and services,income distribution

How to treat benchmark revisions? The case of German production and orders statistics

Elements of an econometric examination of benchmark revisions in real-time data are suggested. Structural break tests may be applied to detect heterogeneities within vintages. Systems cointegration tests are helpful to reveal inconsistencies across vintages. Differencing and rebasing, often used to adjust for benchmark revisions, are generally not sufficient to ensure consistent real-time macroeconomic data. Vintage transformation functions estimated by cointegrating regressions are more flexible. Inappropriate conversion may cause observed revision statistics to be affected by nuisance parameters. In German industrial production and orders statistics, remaining revisions are generally biased and serially correlated. --real-time data,benchmark revisions,industrial production,orders

The Inventory Cycle of the German Economy

Using aggregate data, the paper analyzes the importance of inventory investment for German business cycles since 1960. In contrast to U.S. experience, the traditional productionsmoothing/ buffer-stock model is not rejected by empirical evidence. Preliminary national accounts data of inventory investment have particularly poor quality. In order to be able to analyze recent stockbuilding trends in Germany, we propose a composite index aggregating information drawn from monthly production and sales statistics as well as from the Ifo business survey. --inventory fluctuations,business cycles,data quality,composite index,Germany

Trend and cycle features in German residential investment before and after reunification

Real residential investment in Germany is found to be cointegrated with population, real national income per capita and real house prices. This evidence is consistent with a model where the trend in housing demand is determined by demographic factors and economic well-being to which supply adjusts so slowly that real house prices are affected persistently. Reunification seems to have induced two structural changes in the empirical housing market model. First, the speed of equilibrium adjustment via residential investment slowed down substantially and real house prices lost the capacity to contribute to the adjustment process. Second, the degree of persistence in the error correction term increased a lot. The changing features are key to explain significant differences in alternative trend-cycle decompositions of residential investment. --Residential investment,vector autoregression,trend-cycle decomposition,Germany

Short-run and long-run comovement of GDP and some expenditure aggregates in Germany, France and Italy

The paper presents empirical work on short-run and long-run comovement between the German, French and Italian aggregates of private consumption, business investment, exports, imports, GDP, and changes in inventories. In country-specific data sets, cointegration analyses are carried out both to identify long-run economic relationships and to remove the trend components from the nonstationary series. Analytically, this is done by reparametrizing the vector error correction model in its common trends representation. The resulting (Beveridge-Nelson) trend and cycle components as well as the series of changes in inventories are analyzed with a focus on synchronicity. To measure crosscountry comovement at different frequencies, "cohesion", a summary statistic developed by Croux et al. [2001], is applied. Sampling variability and parameter uncertainty are captured by bootstrapped confidence intervals. --cointegration,trend-cycle decomposition,cohesion,bootstrap

Forecasting the price of crude oil via convenience yield predictions

The paper develops an oil price forecasting technique which is based on the present value model of rational commodity pricing. The approach suggests shifting the forecasting problem to the marginal convenience yield which can be derived from the cost-of-carry relationship. In a recursive out-of-sample analysis, forecast accuracy at horizons within one year is checked by the root mean squared error as well as the mean error and the frequency of a correct direction-of-change prediction. For all criteria employed, the proposed forecasting tool outperforms the approach of using futures prices as direct predictors of future spot prices. Vis-à-vis the random-walk model, it does not significantly improve forecast accuracy but provides valuable statements on the direction of change. --oil price forecasts,rational commodity pricing,convenience yield,single-equation model

Whole genome sequencing reveals potential spread of Clostridium difficile between humans and farm animals in the Netherlands, 2002 to 2011

Farm animals are a potential reservoir for human Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), particularly PCR ribotype 078 which is frequently found in animals and humans. Here, whole genome single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis was used to study the evolutionary relatedness of C. difficile 078 isolated from humans and animals on Dutch pig farms. All sequenced genomes were surveyed for potential antimicrobial resistance determinants and linked to an antimicrobial resistance phenotype. We sequenced the whole genome of 65 C. difficile 078 isolates collected between 2002 and 2011 from pigs (n = 19), asymptomatic farmers (n = 15) and hospitalised patients (n = 31) in the Netherlands. The collection included 12 pairs of human and pig isolates from 2011 collected at 12 different pig farms. A mutation rate of 1.1 SNPs per genome per year was determined for C. difficile 078. Importantly, we demonstrate that farmers and pigs were colonised with identical (no SNP differences) and nearly identical (less than two SNP differences) C. difficile clones. Identical tetracycline and streptomycin resistance determinants were present in human and animal C. difficile 078 isolates. Our observation that farmers and pigs share identical C. difficile strains suggests transmission between these populations, although we cannot exclude the possibility of transmission from a common environmental source

Plasma-photonic spatiotemporal synchronization of relativistic electron and laser beams

Modern particle accelerators and their applications increasingly rely on precisely coordinated interactions of intense charged particle and laser beams. Femtosecond-scale synchronization alongside micrometre-scale spatial precision are essential e.g. for pump-probe experiments, seeding and diagnostics of advanced light sources and for plasma-based accelerators. State-of-the-art temporal or spatial diagnostics typically operate with low-intensity beams to avoid material damage at high intensity. As such, we present a plasma-based approach, which allows measurement of both temporal and spatial overlap of high-intensity beams directly at their interaction point. It exploits amplification of plasma afterglow arising from the passage of an electron beam through a laser-generated plasma filament. The corresponding photon yield carries the spatiotemporal signature of the femtosecond-scale dynamics, yet can be observed as a visible light signal on microsecond-millimetre scales