infonet-economy

Are weekly inflation forecasts informative? Although several central banks review and discuss monetary policy issues on a bi-weekly basis, there have been few attempts by analysts to construct systematic estimates of core inflation that supports such a decision-making schedule. The timeliness of news releases and macroeconomic revisions are recognized to be an important information…

This paper uses vector error correction models of Switzerland for forecasting output, inflation and the short-term interest rate. It considers three different ways of dealing with forecast uncertainties. First, it investigates the effect on forecasting performance of averaging over forecasts from different models. Second, it considers averaging forecasts from different estimation…

We examine how asymmetric information and competition in the credit market affect voluntary information sharing between lenders. We study an experimental credit market in which information sharing can help lenders to distinguish good borrowers from bad ones, ecause borrowers may exogenously switch locations. Lenders are, however, engaged in spatial competition, and thus may lose…

Survey information on Swiss exporters is used to test the hypothesis that firm-specific factors, in particular firm size, are important determinants of pricing-to-market (PTM). The survey asked exporters whether they set dif- ferent prices across markets and, if so, whether price segmentation occurred because of pricing conditions in the local market or other factors. The empirical…

In this paper, we investigate how, in a stylised theoretical framework, an increase in the degree of globalization - modelled as a deline in trade costs - affects the real natural rate of interest by impacting firms markups. Outlining a two- country dynamic general equilibrium model with endogenous elasticity of substitution between goods, we suggest two main propositions: 1)…

This paper examines a special episode in communication practices of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) when short-term interest rates reached the zero bound. A particular feature of SNB communication policy at the time was to talk openly about alternative policy instruments despite the fact that they were never implemented. Non-sterilized FX interventions were frequently mentioned as a…

Multivariate filters based on the Hodrick-Prescott filter are appealing because they combine the advantages of the Hodrick-Prescott filter with economic relationships. Recently, a new multivariate filter has been put forward by Hirose and Kamada (2003). In this article we apply this new filter to Swiss data spanning the period from 1981 to 2005. We estimate both potential output and…

In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm to estimate the term structure of interest rates. It is obtained from a constrained optimization, where the objective is to minimize the integral of squared first derivatives of the instantaneous forward interest rate subject to the condition that the estimated bond prices lie within the range of observed bid and ask prices. We use a finite…

Prospect theory has been the focus of increasing attention in many Fields of economics. However, it has scarcely been addressed in macro-economic growth models - neither on theoretical nor on empirical grounds. In this paper we use prospect theory in a stochastic optimal growth model. Thereafter, the focus lies on linking the Eulerequation obtained from a prospect theory growth model…