* Kenneth Kassa offered helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System. Abstract:Conventional VAR estimation and forecasting ignores the fact that economic data are often subject to revision many months or years after their initial release. This paper shows how VAR analysis can be modified to account for such revisions. The proposed approach assumes that government statistical releases are efficient with a finite lag. It takes no stand on whether earlier revisions are "noise" or "news." The technique is illustrated using data on employment and the unemployment rate, real GDP and the unemployment rate, and real GDP and the GDP/consumption ratio. In each case, the proposed procedure outperforms conventional VAR analysis and the more-restrictive methods for handling the data-revision problem that are found in the existing literature.

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This study identified a few important misconceptions associated with polio and PPI which need to be addressed by large scale awareness campaigns in order to achieve polio eradication in the near future.

Despite the growing popularity of organic food around the globe, there is a dearth of research that has focused on the relationship between customer perceived values and organic food consumption behaviour. The study used cross-sectional data from 202 Indian customers to examine how perceived values such as health, hedonic and social affect consumers’ green purchasing attitude towards organic foods, especially organic fruits and vegetables (OF&V) using an extended value–attitude–behaviour hierarchy (VABH). Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to evaluate the association among the constructs. The findings posit that perceived health, hedonic and social value positively influence consumers’ green purchase attitude (GPA), which in turn influences green purchase intention (GPI), which significantly leads to green purchase behaviour (GPB) towards OF&V. Hedonic value was found to be the strongest motivating reason for Indian customers to buy OF&V. The mediating role of GPI between GPA and GPB has also been confirmed. The study is unique in investigating how consumers’ hedonic and health values impact their attitudes, intentions and actual purchasing behaviour towards OF&V in one of the major food producing countries.

This paper uses the business cycle synchronization criteria of the theory of optimum currency area (OCA) to examine the feasibility of the East African Community (EAC) as a monetary union. We also investigate whether the degree of business cycle synchronization has increased after the 1999 EAC Treaty. We use an unobserved component model to measure business cycle synchronization as the proportion of structural shocks that are common across different countries, and a time-varying parameter model to examine the dynamics of synchronization over time. We find that although the degree of synchronization has increased since 2000 when the EAC Treaty came into force, the proportion of shocks that is common across different countries is still small implying weak synchronization. This evidence casts doubt on the feasibility of a monetary union for the EAC as scheduled by 2012.The strength of economic ties between countries is reflected by the degree of trade and labor market integration. According to Canova and Dellas (1993) and Frankel and Rose (1998) large trade volumes can increase the co-movement of output. Table 1 shows that the EAC intra-regional trade is low and that on average the EAC states trade more with the Euro-area, Asia, and Middle East than with each other.The low EAC intra-regional trade can be attributed to poor transportation and communication infrastructure, plus a narrow range of primary commodities making up the EAC countries' major exports. Burundi's top exports are coffee, gold, and tea; Kenya's are tea, coffee, and fish; Rwanda's is coffee; Tanzania's are coffee, tobacco, and cotton; Uganda's are coffee, fish, and gold. This also reduces the ability to cope with the idiosyncratic macroeconomic shocks, and there might be limited gains from trade within the region. Given that at the moment labor mobility is low and intra-regional trade faces strong limitations, it is compelling that we examine the synchronization between business cycles for the feasibility of the EAC monetary union.

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