We propose to assess the performance of k forecast procedures by exploring the distributions of forecast errors and error losses. We argue that non systematic forecast errors minimize when their distributions are symmetric and unimodal, and that forecast accuracy should be assessed through stochastic loss order rather than expected loss order, which is the way it is customarily performed in previous work. Moreover, since forecast performance evaluation can be understood as a one way analysis of variance, we propose to explore loss distributions under two circumstances; when a strict (but unknown) joint stochastic order exists among the losses of all forecast alternatives, and when such order happens among subsets of alternative procedures. In spite of the fact that loss stochastic order is stronger than loss moment order, our proposals are at least as powerful as competing tests, and are robust to the correlation, autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity settings they consider. In addition, since our proposals do not require samples of the same size, their scope is also wider, and provided that they test the whole loss distribution instead of just loss moments, they can also be used to study forecast distributions as well. We illustrate the usefulness of our proposals by evaluating a set of real world forecasts.
The price setting behavior of Colombian retailers of goods and services was studied based on a unique dataset containing 12,052,970 individual price reports covering all items in the Colombian CPI from March 1999 to May 2008. The main results are summarized as follows: 1. Colombian consumer prices were found to be sticky. More precisely, they were found to be stickier than those in Chile and Portugal and might be more flexible than those in the Euro Area and some European countries. 2. Price reductions are not rare. Forty percent of price changes were found to be reductions. 3. Absolute percentage price changes were found to be larger than inflation. 4. As inflation is reduced in Colombia, the following happens: (i) price stickiness increases, (ii) the distribution of price stickiness concentrates on the rigid side, (iii) the variability and bias of the distribution of percentage price changes decreases, and (iv), nominal downward rigidities in the frequency of price changes are invariant to inflation. 5. A great deal of price setting heterogeneity was also found. 6. A slight downward nominal price rigidity was detected in the data. 7. Price change synchronization was found to be low. 8. About 32% of the CPI corresponds to Taylor contracts, 34% to other time dependent rules and 34% to state dependent rules. 9. The decision to raise prices covaries with inflation and cumulative inflation since the last price update. 10. The decision to reduce prices is highly heterogeneous among different groups of goods and services and covaries with the cumulative inflation since the last price change and the percentage difference between the price and the average market price. These findings provide some of the micro fundamentals for the design of staggered contract models for monetary policy analysis in Colombia.JEL Codes: E31, E52, E58.
Esta investigación contribuye a la identificación, caracterización y modelación de los determinantes de las remesas de trabajadores en Colombia. Incluye una descripción de la evolución y características del flujo migratorio de colombianos hacia el exterior y de los receptores de éstas transferencias en el país. El análisis de los determinantes macroeconómicos de las remesas se realiza mediante la estimación de un modelo VEC, el cual considera, además de las remesas, el stock de migrantes colombianos en el exterior y algunos agregados macroeconómicos que permiten aproximar las variables de decisión del migrante para el envío de recursos a su país de origen. Los resultados del modelo muestran que las remesas se ven favorecidas por el desempeño del PIB de los países donde residen los migrantes, así como por el aumento de la emigración de nacionales hacia el exterior. A su vez, permiten concluir que estas transferencias son contracíclicas con respecto al PIB de Colombia. Palabras clave: Remesas de trabajadores, migración internacional, vector de corrección de errores, balanza de pagos.
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