Forecasting Emerging Market Indicators: Brazil and Russia

The adoption of inflation targeting in emerging market economies makesaccurate forecasting of inflation and output growth in these economies of primary importance. Since only short spans of data are available for such markets, autoregressive and small-scale vector autoregressive models can be suggested as forecasting tools. However,these models include only a few economic time series from the whole variety of data available to forecasters. Therefore dynamic factor models, extracting information from a large number of time series, can be suggested as a reasonable alternative. In this paper two approaches are evaluated on the basis of data available for Brazil and Russia. The results allow us to suggest that the forecasting performance of the models considered depends on the statistical properties of the series to be forecast, which are affected by structural changes and changes in operating regime. This interaction between the statistical properties of the series and the forecasting performance of models requires more detailed investigation.forecasting, emerging markets, factor models

On the power of direct tests for rational expectations against the alternative of constant gain learning

In this paper we study the power of direct tests for rational expectations against the constant gain learning alternative. The investigation is by means of a Monte Carlo study. The tests considered use quantitative expectations data and qualitative survey data that has been quantified. The main finding is that the power of tests for rational expectations against constant gain learning may be very small, making it impossible to distinguish the hypotheses.adaptive learning, tests for rational expectations, quantification methods, constant gain least squares

The Response of Retail Interest Rates to Factor Forecasts of Money Market Rates in Major European Economies

The recent financial crisis has underlined that banks no longer simply accumulate deposits and lend a fraction to their clients. Instead they use interbank markets and structured finance to increase their loan book. This has implications for the understanding of interest rate pass through since a large number of interest rates and macro variables influence the retail rates they set on loans and deposits. This paper uses Stock-Watson factor forecasts to predict market interest rates which are then used as the basis for setting retail rates. We find a significant role for forecasts of future interest rates in determining short- and long-run pass through, and we argue that models which do not include future rates are misspecified.forecasting, factor models, interest rate pass-through

Interest rate Pass-Through in the Major European Economies - The Role of Expectations

Much of the literature on interest rate pass through assumes banks set retail rates in relation to contemporary market rates. We argue that future rates also matter, and if forecasts of future rates are included, the empirical specifications of many previous studies are misspecified. Including forecasts requires careful choice of the data and models used to make forecasts: a large number of variables could influence future market rates, suggesting that factor forecasts method may be an appropriate method to consider. We evaluate forecasts before including them in a model of retail rate adjustment for five interest rates in five European countries and the euro area as a whole. We find a significant role for forecasts of future interest rates in determining short- and long-run pass through, and we show that models which do not include future rates do not provide accurate estimates.forecasting, factor models, interest rate pass-through.

The Second Demographic Transition theory in practice: The case of Israel

The goal of this dissertation was to examine several aspects of the demographic and social change in Israel within the conceptual frameworks of the second demographic transition theory and emancipation theory. Attitude and value change along with the changes in marriage and fertility behaviour in Israel in the last decades were the main object of study. It was argued that focusing on a single case study is beneficial for analyzing the underlying mechanisms and studying the transition as an integrated process, which is interconnected with broader cultural and economic changes. Such in-depth inquiry reveals the issues at stake from the individual point of view, which are often missing in many studies of demographic changes. It also discloses information about the contextual, path-dependent and historical factors that might hamper the onset and slow the further progression of the demographic transition in Israel

Effect of the surface temperature on surface morphology, deuterium retention and erosion of EUROFER steel exposed to low-energy, high-flux deuterium plasma

Samples of EUFROFER, a reduced activation ferritic martensitic steel, were exposed in the linear plasma device Pilot-PSI to a deuterium (D) plasma with incident ion energy of similar to 40 eV and incident D flux of 2-6 x10(23) D/m(2) s to fluences up to 10 27 D/m(2) at surface temperatures ranging from 400 K to 950 K. The main focus of the study lays on the surface morphology changes dependent on the surface temperature and the surface composition evolution, e.g., the enrichment in tungsten; but also the erosion and the D retention are studied. The created surface morphology varies strongly with surface temperature from needle-like to corral-like structures. The visible lateral length scale of the formed structures is in the range of tens of nanometres to above 1 mu m and exhibits two thermal activated regimes below and above similar to 770 K with activation energies of 0.2 eV and 1.3 eV, respectively. The lateral variation of the enrichment of heavy elements on the surface is correlated to this surface morphology at least in the high temperature regime, independent of the origin of the enrichment (intrinsic from the sample or deposited by the plasma). Also the erosion exhibits temperature dependence at least above similar to 770 K as well as a fluence dependence. The amount of deuterium retained in the top 500 nm is almost independent of the exposure temperature and is of the order of 10(18) D/m(2), which would correspond to a sub-monolayer D coverage on the surface. The retained D in the volume summing up over the complete samples exceeds the D retained close to the surface by one order of magnitude. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

ФРЕЙМОВА КОНЦЕПТУАЛІЗАЦІЯ ЖИТТЄВОГО ДОСВІДУ СУБ’ЄКТА В АНГЛОМОВНОМУ БІОГРАФІЧНОМУ НАРАТИВІ. (Linguistic peculiarities of the Britain and Ukrainian dialogic discourse in a chat.

У статті досліджуються особливості фреймової концептуалізації життєвого досвіду суб’єкта в біографічному наративі з позицій когнітивної наратології. Для аналізу застосовується фрейм-сценарій, на основі якого формуються когнітивні сцени і термінальні вузли, релевантні для конкретної подієвої наративної ситуації. (The paper deals with the peculiarities of life experience of the self in terms of frame conceptualization in biographical narrative from the standpoint of cognitive narratology. The analysis employs a frame-scenario that provides conceptual grounds for cognitive scenes and a network of terminals relevant to a particular eventful narrative situation.

Фрактальна рекурсія у біографічному оповідному тексті: лінгвосинергетичний аспект (Fractal recursion in biographical narrative: a linguosynergetic perspective)

У статті розкриваються особливості побудови фрактальної мережі біографічного оповідного тексту за участю фрактальної рекурсії у світлі теорії лінгвосинергетики. За принципом фрактальної рекурсії виокремлено дев’ять фрактальних фрагментів оповіді про біографічний суб’єкт у романі П. Акройда «Chatterton», циклічне повторення яких забезпечують рекурентні синтаксичні конструкції. Встановлено, що фрактальні параметри тексту, які будуються на симетрії подібності, дозволяють розглядати текст як синергетичний об’єкт. (The article reviews the properties of fractal recursion in the fractal network of biographical narrative within the framework of synergetics. Nine fractal fragments of the narrative about the biographical subject are singled out in the novel by P. Ackroyd «Chatterton». It is proved that recurrent syntactic structures account for the fractal recursion of fractal fragments. The fractal parameters of the narrative based on the symmetry of similarity constitute the synergetic essence of the text.