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Daily Archives: January 24, 2015

The Forecasting Power of Consumer Attitudes for Consumer Spending

Working Paper No. 14-10 by Michelle L. Barnes and Giovanni P. Olivei 2014 Series

“The widely studied Reuters/Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment is constructed from the answers to five questions from the more comprehensive Reuters/Michigan Surveys of Consumers. Yet little work has been done on what predictive power the information taken from this more thorough compilation of consumer attitudes and expectations may have for forecasting consumption expenditures. The authors construct a limited set of real-time summary measures for 42 questions selected from these broader Surveys corresponding to three broad economic determinants of consumption—income and wealth, prices, and interest rates, and then use regression analysis to evaluate and test the ability of these summary measures to predict future changes in real consumer expenditures, even when controlling for current and future fundamentals. They explain a nontrivial portion of consumption and other real activity forecast errors from professional forecasts. This is consistent with these measures’ ability to predict consumption even when conditioning on a broader set of fundamentals as well as professional forecasters’ judgmental forecast adjustments.”

Economic Policy Uncertainty and Risk Spillovers in the Eurozone

Bernal, Oscar and Gnabo, Jean-Yves and Guilmin, Grégory, Economic Policy Uncertainty and Risk Spillovers in the Eurozone (January 22, 2015). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2554046 “This paper focuses on the impact of economic policy uncertainty on risk spillovers within the Eurozone and contributes to these two growing literatures. To this end, we adapt the… Continue Reading

Education Rights and Wrongs

Heise, Michael, Education Rights and Wrongs: Publicly Funded Vouchers, State Constitutions, and Education Death Spirals (November 1, 2014). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2554070 “Professor Julie Mead considers whether publicly funded voucher programs “subvert” states’ ability to provide an “adequate” public education consistent with state constitutional requirements. The critical analytic move in Mead’s paper involves… Continue Reading

The Most Innovative Companies 2014

Boston Consulting Group – The Most Innovative Companies 2014, Breaking Through Is Hard to Do: “Innovating isn’t getting any easier. Nor any less important. Our ninth innovation report since 2005 finds that although innovation remains a top corporate priority, executives are feeling less confident in their innovation capabilities. It’s no longer enough to be good… Continue Reading

Reuters Interactive Graph – Journalists killed 1992-2015

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists – Graphic by Matthew Weber/Reuters Graphics – Journalists killed – Click on any person to see more information on the Committee to Protect Journalists website. Users may query by: Name, Position, Gender, Country Killed, Organization worked for; Coverage; Local or foreign; Source of fire; Type of death. Continue Reading

Carabinieri Recover Biggest Stolen Archeology Collection in History

Silvia Donati | January 22, 2015 | Italy Magazine: “More than 5,000 precious artifacts from the past have been recovered in an operation by the Carabinieri that has been described as the biggest recovery of stolen archeological items in history. The collection comprises vases, bronzes, statues and frescoes, including rare pieces, stolen from different Italian… Continue Reading