how do daily changes in oil prices affect us monthly industrial output detecting asymmetry has become increasingly difficult using single frequency data this paper goes beyond the prevailing use of aggregate averaged data in order to provide a more in depth treatment of the dynamic effects of the price of crude oil on industrial output growth to do so we propose an asymmetric mixed data sampling amidas model to examine if there is any concealed evidence of asymmetry arising from daily effects of the price of crude oil on monthly changes in industrial output in the united states us we find that this model is able to detect dynamic asymmetric impacts of a high frequency independent variable on a low frequency dependent variable more effectively than when the high frequency variable is aggregated up at the time interval of the low frequency variable we find that in comparison with the marginal lagged effects of a rise in the daily price of crude oil the effects of a fall in the daily price of crude oil are more sluggish as it takes longer for the effects of the oil price drop to die off over time this finding implies that a fall in the price of crude oil shifts the supply curve rightward less and at a much slower pace than an equivalent price rise shifts it to the left

on electricity consumption and economic growth in china abstract the invention and application of the electric power technology triggered the second industrial revolution in human history which marked the human society entered the age of electricity electricity provides the sustainable power for economic and social development with the rapid development of economy the electricity consumption is also increasing the increase of electricity consumption has further promoted the progress of the industrial economy in order to achieve the goal of improving the level of economic development while reducing energy consumption it is necessary to reveal the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth this study is an extensive overview of the literature surrounding this topic in this paper we focus on the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in china we first analyze the general situation of china s electricity consumption and economic development then we explore the relationship between china s electricity consumption and economic growth from three dimensions i e the time dimension the regional dimension and the industrial dimension finally we study the key issues in the research of the relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth including variable selection model construction and results discussion this work suggests that the nature of the nexus in china should and can be explored from a wider perspective by developing a suitable integrated methodological framework

uncertainty risk and the financial crisis of 2008 the distinction between uncertainty and risk originally drawn by frank knight and john maynard keynes in the 1920s remains fundamentally important today in the presence of uncertainty market actors and economic policy makers substitute other methods of decision making for rational calculation specifically actors decisions are rooted in social conventions drawing from innovations in financial markets and deliberations among top american monetary authorities in the years before the 2008 crisis we show how economic actors and policy makers live in worlds of risk and uncertainty in that world social conventions deserve much greater attention than conventional ipe analyses accords them such conventions must be part of our toolkit as we seek to understand the preferences and strategies of economic and political actors

wage norms capital accumulation and unemployment a post keynesian view the paper presents a post keynesian view of unemployment it argues first that the effective labour demand need not be downward sloping with respect to real wages and aggregate demand need not be downward sloping with respect to inflation second that there is a broad case for unemployment hysteresis understood as endogeneity of the non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment nairu based on social norms in wage bargaining and on the supply side effects of capital accumulation and third that much as keynes argued capital investment rather than labour market institutions is the key variable to explain changes in aggregate unemployment performance across countries and over time overall the paper advocates a keynesian view of the nairu where effective demand determines unemployment in the short run and the deviation of actual unemployment from the nairu determines the change in inflation in the medium term the nairu is endogenous and follows actual unemployment copyright 2011 oxford university press

climate change uncertainty irreversibility and the precautionary principle this paper begins with a critique of the option value argument used by economists to explain and justify the precautionary principle the argument is shown to misrepresent both uncertainty and irreversibility an alternative justification of the precautionary principle is discussed under conditions of keynesian uncertainty and irreversibility interpreted in terms of incommensurability recent formal decision theories under keynesian uncertainty are reviewed and their limitations explored with particular reference to the insights that decision theory can bring to understanding the precautionary principle throughout the decision problems under consideration are those faced by climate change policy makers copyright oxford university press

uma breve historia sobre a abordagem de desequilibrio na macroeconomia this paper presents a brief history of non market clearing approach emphasizing its macroeconomics developments this episode is part of keynesian reaction to neoclassical synthesis crises while friedman and lucas classical reaction is widely known disequilibrium approach became a virtually forgotten episode in the history of economic thought disequilibrium authors aimed to develop a framework sustained in analytical primitives distinct from those that became dominant after new classical methodological victory in that scheme keynesian model was no longer a special case of the classical world but actually the exact opposite that was a singular episode which should not be understood as neoclassical synthesis height or the first movements toward new keynesian economics we also discuss the causes of its failure in became the new mainstream

nowcasting global economic growth a factor augmented mixed frequency approach assessing accurately global economic conditions is a great challenge for economists the international monetary fund proposes within its periodic world economic outlook report a measure of the global gdp annual growth that is generally considered as the benchmark nowcast by macroeconomists in this paper we put forward an alternative approach to provide monthly nowcasts of the annual global growth rate our approach builds on a factor augmented mixed data sampling fa midas model that enables i to account for a large monthly database including various countries and sectors of the global economy and ii to nowcast a low frequency macroeconomic variable using higher frequency information pseudo real time results over the period 2010 16 show that this approach provides reliable and timely nowcasts of the world gdp annual growth on a monthly basis

improving real time estimates of output and inflation gaps with multiple vintage models real time estimates of output gaps and inflation gaps differ from the values that are obtained using data available long after the event part of the problem is that the data on which the real time estimates are based is subsequently revised we show that vector autoregressive models of data vintages provide forecasts of post revision values of future observations and of already released observations capable of improving estimates of output and inflation gaps in real time our findings indicate that annual revisions to output and inflation data are in part predictable based on their past vintages this article has online supplementary materials

energy management and environmental awareness in china s enterprises abstract by virtue of the country s size population and heavy dependance on coal china s situation should be of particular interest to all with a concern both for energy conservation and the environment efforts to conserve energy in china s enterprises must be carried on alongside rapid development and the transition from a command economy to a more hybrid market socialist economy this transition may in the longer term offer opportunities for energy conservation but in the meanwhile can be seen as imposing constraints this paper is the result of field work undertaken in china over the period 1994 1997 the paper begins by outlining the contradictory context for energy conservation in china the international concern about climate change and acid rain and the domestic imperatives of modernization and transformation of the economy then setting out briefly the position with regard to energy supply and consumption and measures for conservation and enforcement it reports the views of managers at three important industrial plants on energy and related environmental matters and more generally of some of the most senior officials and experts in china concerned with forming policy on energy conservation in china s enterprises because little is known of the views of such practitioners outside china these views are presented in some detail and analyzed against the background of the broader changes taking place in china today the paper concludes with a number of specific recommendations to aid progress on conservation as they have been put forward by chinese experts

analysis of uncertainty as opposed to risk an experimental approach the paper illustrates the scope for enhancing the conceptual apparatus used by agricultural economists to analyse decision making under conditions of uncertainty selected empirical results from experiments on student subjects from three universities are reported three issues are considered first the reasons for choice and the understanding of a choice problem are examined second attitudes towards different levels of uncertainty are measured third the possibility that apparently non normative psychological factors influence choice is explored the paper serves to illustrate and support a number of methodological points the major points are that a risk uncertainty distinction is useful contrary to the aging conventional wisdom of economic theory that laboratory experiments can potentially provide data of use to agricultural economists and that predictive models of choice under uncertainty may be more accurate if they take account of psychological variables which influence the decision making processes of human subjects

organic interdependence uncertainty and economic analysis this paper examines the effect of john maynard keynes s organic view of interdependence on his treatment of induction probability and expectations it argues that while organic interdependence is compatible with rational induction and prediction in some circumstances as it must be if there is to be a foundation for economic analysis it is not normally compatible with the existence of a rational foundation for expectation of future yield from capital assets this is not destructive of economic analysis however because keynes assumes most agents respond irrationally and conventionally rather than rationally and capriciously to fundamental uncertainty copyright 1989 by royal economic society

short term gdp forecasting with a mixed frequency dynamic factor model with stochastic volatility in this article we develop a mixed frequency dynamic factor model in which the disturbances of both the latent common factor and of the idiosyncratic components have time varying stochastic volatilities we use the model to investigate business cycle dynamics in the euro area and present three sets of empirical results first we evaluate the impact of macroeconomic releases on point and density forecast accuracy and on the width of forecast intervals second we show how our setup allows to make a probabilistic assessment of the contribution of releases to forecast revisions third we examine point and density out of sample forecast accuracy we find that introducing stochastic volatility in the model contributes to an improvement in both point and density forecast accuracy supplementary materials for this article are available online

first announcements and real economic activity the recent literature suggests that first announcements of real output growth in the us have predictive power for the future course of the economy while the actual value of output growth does not we show that this need not point to a behavioural relationship whereby agents respond to perceptions instead of the truth but may instead simply be a by product of the data revision process the revisions to the initial estimates which define the final values of the observations are shown to be key in determining any relationship between first announcements and the future course of the economy c 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

gender and the stability of consumption a feminist contribution to post keynesian economics alan coddington critiques post keynesians for their use of fundamental uncertainty he argues that fundamental uncertainty should also affect the consumption function undermining the case for keynesian macroeconomic policies this paper shows how contemporary feminist theory provides post keynesians with a compelling response to coddington it uses the concept of gender as an effect of heteronormativity to integrate the household the institution that undertakes consumption spending into post keynesian economics this gives us a more robust analysis of the sources of consumption stability in a world marked by the fundamental unknowability of the future

financialised internationalisation and structural hierarchies a mixed method study of exchange rate determination in emerging economies this paper conducts an extensive mixed method study of exchange rate determination in the brazilian foreign exchange market it combines semi structured interviews with foreign exchange market participants in brazil and london and advanced time series econometrics in line with post keynesian theory and critical realist ontology the interviews uncover the context specific expectations and underlying processes and structures that condition exchange rate dynamics in brazil and emerging economies more generally the results point to important structural changes in brazil s financial integration in the form of currency internationalisation and financialisation moreover they show that this internationalisation has been mediated through a structured and hierarchic international monetary system which fundamentally distinguishes exchange rate drivers in emerging economies from those in developed ones

world steel production a new monthly indicator of global real economic activity this paper proposes world steel production as an indicator of global real economic activity world steel production data is published with only a one month delay thereby providing timely information for world real gdp forecasters we find that world steel production and lutz kilian s 2009 index of global real economic activity generate large gains in forecasting world real gdp relative to an autoregressive benchmark a forecast combination of world steel production kilian s 2009 index of global real economic activity and an index of the industrial production of oecd countries plus six non oecd emerging economies produces significant gains in forecasting world real gdp relative to an autoregressive benchmark

g e moore and j m keynes a missing chapter in the history of the expected utility model in his posthumous essay my early beliefs john maynard keynes outlined his mental history in the dozen years before the war and asserted their importance to his later life yet despite keynes s assertion of the importance of this part of his mental history to who he was and what he did in 1938 the year the essay was written and two years after he published the general theory there is virtually no treatment in the history of economic thought of this period of his life or of its impact on his economic theory the purpose of this essay is to treat an episode of that period of his life which has particular analytical importance and to suggest some ways in which it might contribute to a clearer understanding of his later work in economics the episode in keynes s early life which the essay examines is his role in g e moore s changing opinion about the importance of rules in ethics in his classic principia ethica 1903 moore had originally asserted that obeying certain rules is a necessary part of ethically correct behavior but in his ethics 1912 he makes exactly the opposite argument saying that individuals are always justified in judging a case for themselves and are under no obligation to follow general rules of conduct in the parlance of modern philosophy moore switched from a rule utilitarian argument to an act utilitarian argument the first four sections of the essay detail the role which keynes played in moore s change of heart the final section discusses how the episode affects our understanding of keynes s work in economics

ambiguity and uncertainty in ellsberg and shackle this paper argues that the similarities between ellsberg s and shackle s frameworks for discussing the limits of the probabilistic approach to decision theory are more important than usually admitted the paper discusses the grounds on which the ambiguity surrounding the decision maker in ellsberg s urn experiments can be deemed analogous to the uncertainty faced by shackle s entrepreneur taking crucial decisions the two authors insights are assessed and special attention is paid to the criteria for decision under uncertainty they put forward the paper establishes a link between ellsberg s and shackle s perspectives and the non additive probability approach of gilboa and schmeidler an approach that offers an alternative to standard probability calculus which can be of use to analyse both ambiguity and uncertainty the comparison between ellsberg and shackle draws on an interpretation of keynes s treatise on probability emphasising keynes s rejection of both well defined probability functions and maximisation as a guide to human conduct it is shown that keynes s viewpoint implies a reconsideration of the boundaries of probability theory that is in the same vein of ellsberg s and shackle s concern in the years of the consolidation of savage s new probabilistic mainstream copyright the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the cambridge political economy society all rights reserved oxford university press

is there redemption for conventions this article explores the concept of convention in the social sciences it presents the two major neo humean philosophical approaches to convention and challenges their intuitive appeal and research implications the weaknesses of these approaches are examined and a new direction is suggested for the study of convention the paper goes on to develop a framework for the analysis of conventions using the notion of the exemplar introduced by thomas kuhn an illustration of this alternative approach is provided using the example of the wage relation copyright 2005 oxford university press

theories of choice under ignorance and uncertainty abstract in this paper knight s distinction between risk and uncertainty and its significance for economic analysis are examined the paper consists of a survey of some recent developments on the theory of choice under uncertainty and some applications of these theories to problems for which bayesian decision theory has not proved entirely satisfactory two problems are examined in detail the first is that of finance and insurance and the second is that of risktaking behaviour with special emphasis on lotteries

energy development in china the need for a coherent policy abstract china the world s third largest consumer of primary energy remains in relative terms a poor developing country ambitious modernization plans exemplified by the goal of quadrupling per capita gnp by the year 2000 will require considerable attention to long range energy planning yet the past developments including the most recent guidelines have been marked by abrupt changes and outright reversals leaving china without any coherent energy policy the most durable strategies which emerged during the late 1970s are the stress on coal as the principal fuel building of mine mouth power plants accelerated construction of large hydro stations massive diffusion of small biogas digesters and widespread energy conservation measures

forecasting oil prices high frequency financial data are indeed useful abstract the paper examines the importance of combining high frequency financial information along with the oil market fundamentals in order to gain incremental forecasting accuracy for oil prices inspired by french et al 1987 and bollerslev et al 1988 who maintain that future asset returns are also influenced by past volatility we use daily volatilities and returns from financial and commodity markets to generate real out of sample forecasts for the monthly oil futures prices our results convincingly show that although the oil market fundamentals are useful for long run forecasting horizons the combination of the latter with high frequency financial data significantly improve oil price forecasts by reducing the rmse of the no change forecast by approximately 68 results are even more impressive during the oil price collapse period of 2014 15 these findings suggest that we cannot ignore the information extracted from the financial markets when forecasting oil prices our results are both statistically and economically significant as suggested by several robustness tests

monetary policy rules based on real time data this paper examines the magnitude of informational problems associated with the implementation and interpretation of simple monetary policy rules using taylor s rule as an example i demonstrate that real time policy recommendations differ considerably from those obtained with ex post revised data further estimated policy reaction functions based on ex post revised data provide misleading descriptions of historical policy and obscure the behavior suggested by information available to the federal reserve in real time these results indicate that reliance on the information actually available to policy makers in real time is essential for the analysis of monetary policy rules

china s ongoing energy efficiency drive origins progress and prospects abstract in 2004 china s government launched a vigorous programme to reverse the trend of rising national energy intensity and to reduce intensity by 20 over the period 2006 2010 the aim of this paper is to examine this programme in the context of nearly 30 years of measures to enhance energy efficiency in china and thus to evaluate the likelihood that today s policies will yield improvements over a longer period the country achieved a sustained decline of energy intensity in the period 1980 2001 but this trend was reversed in 2002 this reversal arose from a shift in the structure of the economy to more energy intensive industries and from a decline in the rate of technical innovation the measures taken since 2003 have been directed principally at energy intensive industries but have also addressed other sectors of the economy though the energy intensity target for the year 2010 may be achieved greater efforts will be needed to address a number of constraints which include the reluctance to use economic and financial instruments the dependency of energy policy on industrial and social policies the nature of political decision making and of public administration a shortage of skills and social attitudes to energy

different approaches to economic modelling in an earlier paper lawson 1981 i attempted to assess certain new classicist criticisms of keynesian1 model building and in so doing i sought to distinguish alternative approaches or attitudes to economic modelling although it was not a necessary or funda mental part of the paper i made reference in this context to the work of professor hendry and his associates as a prominent current example of modelling that was within what i referred to as the standard econometric approach in doing so i wished to make essentially two comments firstly i suggested that the latter approach appears to claim the objective of identifying true models and secondly i noted the significant emphasis that is placed on requirements of parameter constancy and predictive accuracy in his response to my paper hendry 1983 summarises his whole approach thus touch ing upon a wider range of issues the note is also somewhat qualifactory in style it is therefore perhaps not surprising that there seems to be a significant amount in his com ment which despite its general tenor is not inconsistent with and indeed is somewhat supportive of much of the keynesian approach as set out in my earlier paper and else where there are thus parts of hendry s2 comment that i need not address in this response ultimately some of the differences that do exist may even come down to a matter of empha sis although to say this is not necessarily to downplay them qualificatory considerations in hendry s contributions may even be central in an alternative approach what are surpris ing are hendry s interpretation of my comments on true models and his suggestion that keynesian modellers do not attempt to obtain models that are data coherent in some sense i thus welcome the opportunity to reiterate and to some extent develop my views in the hope that they will not be further misinterpreted in section 2 i discuss the issue of true models where i dispute hendry s claim that i have misrepresented what he has written and in section 3 i argue that many of hendry s remarks on keynesian model determination seem to rest on misinterpretation

the application of development economics general principles and context specificity the purpose of this paper is to consider the application of development economics at the methodological level in particular given the shortcomings of both the modernist and postmodernist approaches to development policy we consider an alternative approach drawing on critical realism which combines the benefits of generality with the benefits of attention to specificity of context the approach is illustrated by showing how principles in development economics addressing issues of globalisation and peripherality can serve to illuminate some of the causal tendencies at work in a developed economy such as scotland copyright 2005 oxford university press

the uncertain foundations of the welfare state abstract the welfare state is often portrayed as provider of insurance against uncertainties in knight s 1921 sense of the term which would be refused or underinsured on private markets this image conflicts with the standard economic model of risk exchange founded on the subjective interpretation of probability which predicts that all individual uncertainties will be insured by private markets our aim in this paper is to explain why this prediction fails and building on contributions to decision theory that take seriously the idea of knightian uncertainty to show why social insurance may be justified

optimal price adjustment under imperfect information abstract variations in cost and demand do not have symmetrical impact on the optimal price of the imperfectly competitive firm this asymmetry is not so important as long as information regarding both cost and demand is sufficient however it becomes crucially important in case of incomplete information usually firms have more complete or harder information on cost than on demand this difference in information status on the cost and on the demand side can explain both cost based pricing and slow price adjustment to demand in an optimizing framework with bayesian learning about changed demand conditions

the source of optimality in action it is well known that the nature of the information set and the axioms of rational choice are critical in determining the type of ranking on which agents are held to act in economic theory this paper argues that the concept of the optimising agent is also sensitive to the conception of the relation between a ranking of options facing an agent and concrete action what is termed the realisation process three conceptions of the realisation process are examined which are seen to lead to three quite distinct views on the role of agency the enabling conditions under which the concept of the optimising agent may be legitimately applied and the resulting domain of application of optimisation

macroeconomic forecasting with mixed frequency data forecasting output growth in the united states many macroeconomic series such as u s real output growth are sampled quarterly although potentially useful predictors are often observed at a higher frequency we look at whether a mixed data frequency sampling midas approach can improve forecasts of output growth the midas specification used in the comparison uses a novel way of including an autoregressive term we find that the use of monthly data on the current quarter leads to significant improvement in forecasting current and next quarter output growth and that midas is an effective way to exploit monthly data compared with alternative methods

keynes s critiques of moore philosophical foundations of keynes s economics this paper analyzes three of john maynard keynes s unpublished apostles papers ethics in relation to conduct miscellanea ethica and egoism and the philosophical discussion in the first chapters of the treatise on probability it argues that keynes s philosophical development before and in the treatise can be understood as an effort to make sense of the concept of intuition specifically it is argued that keynes abandoned a two fold view of intuition in the early papers for a two tier epistimology of acquaintance and knowledge in the treatise only to return to the two fold view later in the general theory copyright 1991 by oxford university press

behind methodological individualism methodological individualism has become a more fashionable slogan for economistsin recent years in specific terms we are being urged to accept a doctrine within whichall explanations of social phenomena have to be couched in terms of statements aboutindividuals however the term has a wide and sometimes ambiguous usage and is beingemployed as a packaging for all kinds of methodological and theoretical prescriptions forexample it has been regarded as a commandment that thou shalt where possible placemacroeconomic statements on firm microeconomic foundations e g blaug 1980 or aninjunction against reckless aggregation particularly in regard to welfare criteria orsocial welfare functions e g kirzner 1980 littlechild 1978 or as an inspiration forrecent theoretical developments in economics with pro market policy conclusions e g furubotn and pejovich 1974 one of the further problems in discussing this topic is that often the term methodo logical individualism carries an ideological charge indeed by both advocates and itsopponents it is too frequently confused with individualism of a political variety however the connection between political and methodological individualism is merely assumed bythese supporters or critics or supported by cursory argument it is never demonstratedwith any rigour although there is a lack of uniformity in the use of the label it is argued here that the keyelement in the classic statements of methodological individualism is a refusal to examinethe institutional or other forces which are involved in the moulding of individual pref erences and purposes we are thus confronted with a remarkable optimism about thepossibility of explanation of social phenomena in terms of individuals but an extremereluctance to give even partial explanations of individual behaviour in social or evenpsychological terms this refusal is both dogmatic and as will be argued below unaccept able on analytical grounds this reduction of explanation and thereby causality solely to individuals has a furtherimplication the explanation of social phenomena proceeds even by a circuitous route

shared quality uncertainty and the introduction of indeterminate goods the purpose of this paper is to introduce a new category of goods indeterminate goods which will be compared with the classical framework of experience search and credence goods nelson 1970 darby and karni 1973 this concept sheds new light on the nature and status of quality uncertainty through the following hypothesis uncertainty about the product s quality can be shared by all agents of the market and this uncertainty can be non neutral and disrupt the market we identify three types of shared uncertainty about the product s characteristics and the corresponding problems that can arise shared uncertainty due to the emergence of a product hirschman 1974 shared uncertainty concerning the past of a product basing ourselves on the art market and finally shared uncertainty regarding the future impacts of a product through empirical data on product safety

are daily financial data useful for forecasting gdp evidence from mexico this article evaluates the use of financial data sampled at high frequencies to improve short term forecasts of quarterly gdp for mexico the model uses both quarterly and daily sampling frequencies while remaining parsimonious in particular the mixed data sampling midas regression model is employed to deal with the multi frequency problem to preserve parsimony factor analysis and forecast combination techniques are used to summarize the information contained in a data set containing 392 daily financial series our findings suggest that the midas model incorporating daily financial data leads to improvements in quarterly forecasts of gdp growth over traditional models that either rely only on quarterly macroeconomic data or average daily frequency data the evidence suggests that this methodology improves the forecasts for the mexican gdp notwithstanding its higher volatility relative to that of developed countries furthermore we explore the ability of the midas model to provide forecast updates for gdp growth nowcasting

das maynard keynes problem one of the classic questions in the history of ideas first arose one hundred years ago in germany reading adam smith s two great works the theory of moral sentiments and the wealth of nations late 19th century german economists were struck by an apparent puzzle how could the theorist who made sympathy the mainspring of human action in the first book argue in the second that calculating self interest was the primary motive force thus arose das adam smith problem how could one reconcile the advocate of sympathy with the advocate of self interest the history of the attempts to answer this question is instructive in many ways it is instructive in part as a lesson in the fertility of the history of economic thought as a source of ideas a o hirschman is an outstanding example of an original and creative theorist who has come to fresh insights on the basis of his research on the question see hirschman 1977 1986 the history is also instructive in pointing out the indeterminate nature of the solution to the problem despite the stature of the scholars who have worked in the field and the high quality of their work one must ultimately accept that we shall never know the true answer to the question smith left few papers and the context of his thought is itself a puzzle for us careful reconstruction of the unfolding social cultural and philosophical worlds that smith inhabited would certainly be hallmarks of any acceptable answer to the question but authorities on each of these background areas themselves disagree about what was happening in the worlds in which smith lived reasonable persons must agree to disagree about the answer to the question

markov switching midas models this article introduces a new regression model markov switching mixed data sampling ms midas that incorporates regime changes in the parameters of the mixed data sampling midas models and allows for the use of mixed frequency data in markov switching models after a discussion of estimation and inference for ms midas and a small sample simulation based evaluation the ms midas model is applied to the prediction of the u s economic activity in terms of both quantitative forecasts of the aggregate economic activity and the prediction of the business cycle regimes both simulation and empirical results indicate that ms midas is a very useful specification

liquidity preference in a portfolio framework and the monetary theory of kahn this paper examines the relation between variations in the propensity towards liquidity preference price adjustment and shifts in portfolio allocation by expanding kahn s idea of marginal equilibrium under strong uncertainty in financial markets and contributes to recent post keynesian attempts to develop a liquidity preference theory of asset prices by providing an analysis of the price adjustment mechanism the notion of the own rate of money interest is utilised to develop a multi asset liquidity preference framework which is consistent with uneven variations of liquidity premia across assets in response to changes in the degree of strong uncertainty that is specific to different investors with variable allocation of assets in their portfolios more specifically in the context of this portfolio framework it is established that an increase in the state of strong uncertainty state of bearishness makes less liquid assets further less inconvenient than more liquid assets in periods characterised by greater strong uncertainty equilibrium is restored through a greater demand for more liquid assets including money relative to the demand for less liquid assets and therefore through a higher own rate of money interest for less liquid assets than warranted which shows the ineffectiveness of standard monetary policy

deficient foresight a troublesome theme in keynesian economics the fact that john maynard keynes had made a distinguished contribution to the theory of probability 1921 no doubt predisposed many of his readers to imbue with great significance his subsequent remarks on the related topic of uncertainty in economic decision making among those who have provided commentaries on his work there are those who have singled out this uncertainty theme not only for its special importance but also for its potential for analytical subversion the purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the ideas involved in this particular aspect of keynes work together with the lines of argument that have emerged from those commentators who have pursued it the result of this scrutiny will be to call into question the idea that there is anything peculiarly subversive in the analytical consequences of broaching problems of uncertainty in economic decision making i shall argue rather that as an analytical issue it is depending on how it is handled either innocuous or else quite indiscriminately destructive

shaping china s energy security the impact of domestic reforms this paper is a subsequent study of china s energy security situation which concludes that china s energy security has not improved over 30 years of economic reform the objective of the study is to explore qualitatively why the energy security situation has not improved to answer the why question the study opens up a new perspective by analyzing the relationship between energy security and energy policies from the macroeconomic reform perspective this study discusses major reforms that took place over 30 years it is found that china s macroeconomic reform has restricted the formation of china s energy policies and determined its energy security situation in essence china s energy policies are only a reaction to the macroeconomic measures in other words china s energy policies are not originally intended to improve energy security but passive reactions to china s macroeconomic reform this explains why china did not improve its energy security situation despite 30 years of reform

a technical definition of uncertainty and the long run non neutrality of money ever since knight s 1921 seminal work some economists have drawn a distinction between uncertainty and risk in order to demonstrate that this difference has important implications for understanding the operations of an entrepreneurial economy lawson 1985 is the latest to discuss the need for the analysis of societal interaction 1 in an economic world where uncertainty as opposed to mathematical risk is a pervasive fact of life p 909 lawson correctly associates the concept of uncertainty with the situation where there is no basis whatever upon which to form any calculable probability uncertainty in this account arises when the probability relation is numerically indeterminate and non comparable to other probability relations 1985 p 914

real time fiscal forecasting using mixed frequency data the sovereign debt crisis has increased the importance of monitoring budgetary execution we employ real time data using a mixed data sampling midas methodology to demonstrate how budgetary slippages can be detected early on we show that in spite of using real time data the year end forecast errors diminish significantly when incorporating intra annual information our results show the benefits of forecasting aggregates via subcomponents in this case total government revenue and expenditure our methodology could significantly improve fiscal surveillance and could therefore be an important part of the european commission s model toolkit

beyond rational expectations a constructive interpretation of keynes s analysis of behaviour under uncertainty this paper suggests that behavior under uncertainty depends not only on rational expectations but also the agent s evaluation of the adequacy of the available evidence on which the expectations are based it is argued that behavioral functions need to be augmented by a credence variable this proposition is derived from keynes s argument in the general theory that investment depends on both the most probable forecast and the state of confidence reflecting the distinction between probability and weight in his a treatise on probability the research implications of the proposed model are indicated copyright 1994 by royal economic society

the relative absolute nature of knowledge and economic analysis central to economic analysis are assumptions and hypotheses concerning the extent and nature of the knowledge held by individuals in this respect it is a noticeable feature of realist accounts that they tend to focus upon the pervasiveness of uncertainty as an undeniable fact of economic life nonrealist or instrumentalist accounts in contrast tend to assume that agents have perfect information correct foresight rational expectations and so on it is also apparent that this realist focus upon uncertainty tends to give rise to a concentration of attention upon those situations in which possibly numerically measurable probabilistic knowledge is thought to be available clearly such accounts are important nevertheless i wish to suggest that such a restricted choice of focus for the realist is not entirely satisfactory since in particular it tends to lead to a neglect of the widespread observation that feelings of certainty and claims to truth are also pervasive in human society i want to suggest moreover that if we are to account for the latter observation and economists concerned with realism of analysis surely need to then various arguments and conclusions have to be taken on board which in turn appear to bear consequentially upon the nature and conduct of economic analysis in general section i below discusses such possible limitations of existing realist accounts of agent knowledge in some detail the suggested route for responding to and resolving apparent problems which involves the argument that aspects of knowledge can have a relative as well as an absolute character is described in sections ii and iii and the various analytical consequences of the account there set out are discussed in section iv section v contains concluding comments and touches upon ways in which the proposed account might be appraised and rnade operational

do high frequency stock market data help forecast crude oil prices evidence from the midas models abstract extensive studies have used stock market information to forecast crude oil prices and stock market can more easily derive high frequency data than crude oil market due to no revisions which raises a question that whether high frequency stock market data can improve the forecast performance of crude oil prices therefore this paper employs the midas model and the high frequency data of four stock market indices to forecast wti and brent crude oil prices at lower frequency the results indicate that the high frequency stock market indices have certain advantage over the lower frequency data in forecasting monthly crude oil prices and the midas model using high frequency data proves superior to the ordinary model

real time forecasting of inflation and output growth with autoregressive models in the presence of data revisions we examine how the accuracy of real time forecasts from models that include autoregressive terms can be improved by estimating the models on lightly revised data instead of using data from the latest available vintage the benefits of estimating autoregressive models on lightly revised data are related to the nature of the data revision process and the underlying process for the true values empirically we find improvements in root mean square forecasting error of 2 4 when forecasting output growth and inflation with univariate models and of 8 with multivariate models we show that multiple vintage models which explicitly model data revisions require large estimation samples to deliver competitive forecasts copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

some remarks on uncertainty and economic analysis in an important paper lawson i 985 a discusses the conditions under which it is possible to carry out a coherent economic analysis of a system which is subject to fundamental uncertainty as opposed to mathematical risk the issue is crucial for although the fact of uncertainty can hardly be denied it seems to have been extraordinarily difficult to take this into account in formal economic theory it remains in coddington s i982 phrase a troublesome theme since the subject of uncertainty was broached by keynes and by knight in the interwar period the response by economists has fallen into two main categories those whose major interest has been pushing on with the technical analysis have simply ignored it apparently on operational grounds for example a remarkably frank modern statement of the position is to be found in lucas i98i as quoted by lawson i985a p gog on the other hand those economists who have wished to emphasise uncertainty notably shackle and the post keynesians have been rightly or wrongly accused of analytical nihilism coddington i983 p 6i and have certainly not yet provided an alternative theoretical framework which would be persuasive to the majority of the profession against this background lawson seeks to establish the view as he puts it i 985 a p 9 i o that economic analysis can be constructive whilst admitting that we know less about the future than is typically assumed lawson begins his discussion with a re examination of j m keynes early work on probability theory in the treatise on probability i973 b and on the perceived links 1 985 a p 914 between the treatise and keynes later treatment of uncertainty in the context of economics i973a pp 147 64 1973 d pp 109 23 1 given keynes seminal contributions to the literature we would agree that this focus is appropriate but we wish to argue in the present note that the discussion can be usefully extended by consideration of certain issues raised by keynes which are not emphasised in lawson s treatment particularly important in this context is the position which keynes reached on the basic difference in subject matter between the natural sciences and the so called moral sciences and hence on the appropriateness of what he had described in the treatise i973b pp 276 8 as the atomic and organic assumptions as applied to each this is an issue which has attracted the

keynes on atomism and organicism this paper examines john maynard keynes s early unpublished paper miscellanea ethica and concludes that keynes developed an atomist view of economic agents based on the assumption that the individual mind is an organic unity the paper argues this view was part of keynes s subjectivist critique of the realist tenets of g e moore s principia ethica and that keynes retained this view of the agent in the treatise on probability the biography of f y edgeworth the critique of j tinbergen and the general theory the paper concludes that the recent literature arguing that keynes adopted an organicist view of agents in the economy lacks foundation copyright 1989 by royal economic society