Silvopastoral agroforestry - an option to support sustainable grassland intensification

N/

Adoption of agroforestry options in land use policy measures in northern and southern Ireland

N/

Global game, local goals : football and the global-local nexus : a thesis in partial fulfilment of the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology, Massey University, Albany

Association football is the most popular sport in the world with massive numbers of players and supporters, both male and female. The global spread of football coupled with its projection through mass media to global audiences suggests an analysis based on the discourse of globalisation. However. 'Global Games. Local Goals' shows that football is also highly-localised. with football clubs and national teams having great significance as centres of community and identity. Thus an anthropological analysis of football necessitates a dialectical approach that addresses the inter- relationship between the global and the local. 'Global Game, Local Goals' also argues that while the 'big picture' of globalisation studies offers relevant macro-analytical possibilities, the particularism of highly-localised ethnographic studies that have been part of the anthropological tradition should not be lost in the rush to larger scale studies of globalisation'. Thus the anthropological tradition of particularism is preserved but is also blended with the universalism of globalisation and theorisation

US, Japan and the euro area: comparing business-cycle features

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common business cycle, asymmetries in the national cycles and, using a number of algorithms, date business-cycle turning points. Despite a high degree of trade and financial linkages, the cyclical features of US, Japan and the euro area appear quite distinct. Documenting and comparing such international business-cycle features can aid forecasting, model selection and policy analysis etc. JEL Classification: C32, F20business-cycle, euro area, Japan, US

Technology, utilization and inflation: what drives the New Keynesian Phillips Curve?

We argue that the New-Keynesian Phillips Curve literature has failed to deliver a convincing measure of “fundamental inflation”. We start from a careful modeling of optimal price setting allowing for non-unitary factor substitution, non-neutral technical change and timevarying factor utilization rates. This ensures the resulting real marginal cost measures match volatility reductions and level changes witnessed in many US time series. The cost measure comprises conventional counter-cyclical cost elements plus pro-cyclical (and co-varying) utilization rates. Although pro-cyclical elements dominate, real marginal costs are becoming less cyclical over time. Incorporating this richer driving variable produces more plausible price-stickiness estimates than otherwise and suggests a more balanced weight of backward and forward-looking inflation expectations than commonly found. Our results challenge existing views of inflation determinants and have important implications for modeling inflation in New-Keynesian models. JEL Classification: E20, E30cyclicality, inflation, intensive labor, Labor Share, overtime premia, production function, real marginal costs, utilization

Forecasting inflation with thick models and neural networks

This paper applies linear and neural network-based “thick” models for forecasting inflation based on Phillips–curve formulations in the USA, Japan and the euro area. Thick models represent “trimmed mean” forecasts from several neural network models. They outperform the best performing linear models for “real-time” and “bootstrap” forecasts for service indices for the euro area, and do well, sometimes better, for the more general consumer and producer price indices across a variety of countries. JEL Classification: C12, E31bootstrap, Neural Networks, Phillips Curves, real-time forecasting, Thick Models

Is forecasting with large models informative? Assessing the role of judgement in macroeconomic forecasts

We evaluate residual projection strategies in the context of a large-scale macro model of the euro area and smaller benchmark time-series models. The exercises attempt to measure the accuracy of model-based forecasts simulated both out-of-sample and in-sample. Both exercises incorporate alternative residual-projection methods, to assess the importance of unaccounted-for breaks in forecast accuracy and off-model judgment. Conclusions reached are that simple mechanical residual adjustments have a significant impact of forecasting accuracy irrespective of the model in use, ostensibly due to the presence of breaks in trends in the data. The testing procedure and conclusions are applicable to a wide class of models and thus of general interest. JEL Classification: C52, E30, E32, E37Forecast accuracy, Forecast Projections, In-Sample, Macro-model, Out-of-Sample, Structural Break

New Keynesian Phillips Curves: a reassessment using euro-area data

Using euro-area data, we re-examine the empirical success of New Keynesian Phillips Curves (NKPCs). The nature of our re-evaluation relies on the actual empirical underpinnings of such estimates: we find existing estimates un-robust and – given that key parameters are generally calibrated rather than estimated – potentially at odds with the data. We re-estimate with a wellspecified optimizing supply-side (which attempts to treat non-stationarity in factor income shares and mark-ups) and this allows us to derive estimates of technology parameters and marginal costs. Our resulting estimates of the euro-area NKPCs are robust, provide reasonable estimates for fixed-price durations and discount rates and embody plausible dynamic properties. Our method for identifying and estimating New Keynesian Phillips curves has general applicability to a wide set of countries and might also be used in identifying sectoral NKPCs. JEL Classification: E31Euro-Area, Inflation Dynamics, Phillips Curves, Supply-Side