Applied Microeconomics
Applied Microeconomics
The Applied Microeconomics research group unites researchers working on a broad array of topics within such areas as labour economics, economics of education, health economics, family economics, urban economics, environmental economics, and the economics of science and innovation. The group operates in close collaboration with the CAGE Research Centre.
The group participates in the CAGE seminar on Applied Economics, which runs weekly on Tuesdays at 2:15pm. Students and faculty members of the group present their ongoing work in two brown bag seminars, held weekly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 1pm. Students, in collaboration with faculty members, also organise a bi-weekly reading group in applied econometrics on Thursdays at 1pm. The group organises numerous events throughout the year, including the Research Away Day and several thematic workshops.
Our activities
Work in Progress seminars
Tuesdays and Wednesdays 1-2pm
Students and faculty members of the group present their work in progress in two brown bag seminars. See below for a detailed scheduled of speakers.
Applied Econometrics reading group
Thursdays (bi-weekly) 1-2pm
Organised by students in collaboration with faculty members. See the Events calendar below for further details
People
Academics
Academics associated with the Applied Microeconomics Group are:
Research Students
Events
Lunchtime Workshop: Ken Wallis
Forecasting inflation in the crisis: the Bank’s Survey of External Forecasters, 2006-2010
(joint work with Gianna Boero and Jeremy Smith)
The Bank’s quarterly Survey of External Forecasters (SEF) began in 1996 by asking respondents for their point forecasts (“central projections”) and density forecasts of RPIX inflation in the fourth quarter (Q4) of the current year and Q4 of the following year. Sincethen there have been several changes in the survey – variables have been added or changed (RPIX/CPI), forecast target dates have been added and changed, as have the histogram bins supplied for the probability forecasts, and respondents have come and gone. In 2005 the Bank agreed to my request to make the (anonymised) individual responses to the survey available to researchers, and the dataset has been updated annually. To date we have published four articles on different research questions illuminated by these data:
“Uncertainty and disagreement in economic prediction …”, EJ 118 (2008), 1107-1127
“Evaluating a three-dimensional panel of point forecasts …”, IJF 24 (2008), 354-367
“Here is the news: forecast revisions in the [Bank’s SEF]”, NIER No.203 (2008), 68-77
“Scoring rules and survey density forecasts”, IJF 27 (2011), 379-393.
The first three articles were based on the surveys up to November 2005, then an importantbreak occurred with the May 2006 survey questionnaire, which replaced the previous target dates of Q4 this year, Q4 next year and two-years-ahead with one-, two- and three-yearsahead. The fourth article used the quarterly series of two-year-ahead forecasts from February 1998 to November 2006: with inflation outcomes to 2008Q4 this caught the beginning of the recent more volatile experience, in contrast to the “NICE” period previously analysed. This seminar reviews some of our earlier findings in the light of this experience, and presents some new insights into forecasters’ behaviour.