1,721,143 research outputs found
MANUALE DI GEOMETRIA: ESERCIZI E TEMI D'ESAME SVOLTI
No full textTesto divulgativo per studentesse e studenti del primo anno di IngegneriaPopular text for students of the first year of Engineerin
MANUALE DI GEOMETRIA: TEORIA
No full textTesto divulgativo per studentesse e studenti del primo anno di IngegneriaPopular text for students of the first year of Engineerin
Le famiglie italiane e l'introduzione dell'Euro: storia di uno shock annunciato
No full textIl lavoro analizza l’evoluzione dell’atteggiamento delle famiglie italiane nell’ultimo biennio, proponendo alcune interpretazioni delle loro percezioni e di come queste abbiano interagito con alcune variabili macroeconomiche. Dagli inizi del 2002 le famiglie sono apparse sempre più pessimiste, come risulta dalla caduta dell’indice del clima di fiducia (ICF), sceso fino ai livelli minimi della recessione del 1992-93. Mediante l’ausilio di modelli econometrici in cui il clima di fiducia dipende da alcune variabili macroeconomiche di immediata rilevanza per le famiglie, nel lavoro si mostra come l’equazione dell’ICF presenti nel periodo 2002-2004 una costante e consistente sovrastima, segnalando la presenza di un break strutturale. Per capire le motivazioni di questa evoluzione si analizza la relazione tra l’ICF e le percezioni dell’inflazione da parte delle famiglie. L’introduzione nel modello di questa variabile, ne migliora nettamente la performance eliminando ogni traccia di “rottura” nella specificazione. La peculiarità del caso italiano, rispetto a quelli francese e tedesco, rafforza l’ipotesi secondo cui l’evento%
The use of monthly indicators to forecast quarterly GDP in the short run: an application to the G7 countries
No full textThe delayed release of the National Account data for GDP is an impediment to the early understanding of the economic situation. In the short run, this information gap may be at least partially eliminated by bridge models (BM) which exploit the information content of timely updated monthly indicators. In this paper we examine the forecasting ability of BM for GDP growth in the G7 countries and compare their performance to that of univariate and multivariate statistical benchmark models. We run four alternative one-quarter ahead forecasting experiments to assess BM performance in situations as close as possible to the actual forecasting activity. BM are estimated for GDP both for single countries (US, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Canada), and area-wide (G7, European Union, and Euro area). BM forecasting ability is always superior to that of benchmark models, provided that at least some monthly indicator data are available over the forecasting horizon
Short-Run Italian GDP Forecasting and Real-Time Data
No full textNational accounts statistics undergo a process of revisions over time because of the accumulation of information and, less frequently, of deeper changes, as new definitions, new methodologies etc. are implemented. In this paper we try to characterise the revision process of the data of Italian GDP as published by the national statistical office (ISTAT) in the stream of the noise models literature. The analysis shows that this task can be better accomplished by concentrating on the growth rates of the data instead of the levels. Another issue tackled in the paper concerns the informative content of the preliminary releases vis a vis an intermediate vintage supposed to embody all statistical information (or no longer revisable as far as purely statistical changes are concerned) and the latest vintage of the data, supposed to be the definitive one. The analysis of the news models in differences is based on the comparison of the forecasting performance of the preliminary releases with that of a number of one step ahead forecasts computed from alternative models, ranging from very simple univariate to multivariate specifications based on indicato
Why Demand Uncertainty Curbs Investment: evidence from a panel of Italian Firms
No full textTheoretically, the effect on investment of uncertainty over the demand for a firm’s
product may be unclear because of the influence of several factors, such as the production
technology and the amount of competition in the product market. It has not been possible,
until now, to investigate more closely the interplay of different factors in the time dimension
because the empirical research has been based on cross-section analysis. This omission
makes biased estimates of the investment-uncertainty relationship likely. The aim of this
paper is to extend the findings of the empirical literature using a panel of Italian firms in the
period 1996-2004, covering a complete business cycle. The availability of panel survey data
on companies’ investment plans, expected future sales and demand uncertainty allows us to
account for unobservable individual differences between firms, macroeconomic shocks and
the evolution of the investment-uncertainty relationship. A key finding of our paper
concerns the role of the competition encountered by Italian firms in 1996-2004. The gradual
loss of market power over time of Italian manufacturing firms, along with the increasing
flexibility of labour input may have weakened the negative effect of uncertainty on
investment decisions. We show that, in repeated cross-section estimates, the omission of
firm-specific effects together with the dynamic interplay described above, would have lead
to misleading conclusions about the relevance of demand uncertainty in explaining
investment decisions
Why demand uncertainty curbs investment: Evidence from a panel of Italian manufacturing firms
No full textTheoretically, the effect on investment of uncertainty over the demand for a firm’s product is unclear because of the influence of several factors, such as the production technology and the amount of competition in the product market. It has not been possible, until
now, to investigate more closely the interplay of different factors in the time dimension because the empirical research has been based on cross-section analysis. This omission makes biased estimates of the investment-uncertainty relationship likely. The aim of this paper is to extend the findings of the empirical literature using a panel of Italian firms in the period 1996–2004, covering a complete business cycle. The availability of panel survey data on companies’ investment plans, expected future sales and demand uncertainty
allows us to account for unobservable individual differences between firms, macroeconomic shocks and the evolution of the investment–uncertainty relationship. A key finding of our paper concerns the role of the competition encountered by Italian firms in
1996–2004. The gradual loss of market power over time of Italian manufacturing firms, along with the increasing flexibility of labour input has weakened the negative effect of uncertainty on investment decisions. We show that, in repeated cross-section estimates, the omission of firm-specific effects together with the dynamic interplay described above, would have lead to misleading conclusions about the relevance of demand uncertainty in explaining investment decisions
Forecasting Monthly Industrial Production in Real-Time: From Single Equations to Factor-Based Models
No full textThe aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of alternative forecasting methods to predict the index of industrial production in Italy from 1 to 3 months ahead.We use twelve different models, from simpleARIMA to dynamic factor models exploiting the timely information of up to 110 short-term indicators, both qualitative
and quantitative. This allows to assess the relevance for the forecasting practice of alternative combinations of types of data (real-time and latest available), estimation methods and periods.Out-of-sample predictive ability tests stress the relevance of more indicators in disaggregate models over sample periods covering a complete business cycle (about 7 years in Italy). Our findings downgrade the emphasis on both the estimationmethod
and data revision issues. In line with the classical “average puzzle”, the use of simple averages of alternative forecasts often improves the predictive ability of their single components, mainly over short horizons. Finally, selected indicators and factor-based models always perform significantly better than ARIMA models,
suggesting that the short-run indicator signal always dominates the noise component. On this regard, selected indicators models can further increase the amount of signal extracted to improve up to 30–40% the short-run predictive ability of factor-based models and to forecast-encompass them
Real-time squared: A real-time data set for real-time GDP forecasting
No full textThe paper uses real-time data to mimic real-time GDP forecasting activity. Through automatic searches for the best indicators to predict GDP one step and four steps ahead, we compare the out-of-sample forecasting performance of adaptive models using different data vintages and produce three main findings. First, despite data revisions, the forecasting performance of models with indicators is better, but this advantage tends to vanish over longer forecasting horizons. Second, the practice of using fully updated datasets at the time the forecast is made (i.e. taking the best available measures of today’s economic situation) does not appear to bring effective improvement in forecasting ability: the first GDP release is predicted just as well by models using either real-time or the latest available data. Third, although the first release is a rational forecast of GDP data after all statistical revisions have taken place, the forecast based on the latest available GDP data (i.e. the “temporarily best” measures) may be improved by combining preliminary official releases with one-step-ahead forecasts
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