We use the structural factor model proposed by Forni, Giannone, Lippi and Reichlin (2007) to study the effects of monetary policy. The advantage with respect to the traditional vector autoregression model is that we can exploit information from a large data set, made up of 112 US monthly macroeconomic series. Monetary policy shocks are identified using a standard recursive scheme, in which the ...

This paper deals with the existence of a common European growth cycle and its identification. Based on the analysis of some descriptive statistics in the time and frequency domain there is clear evidence of comovement in output growth among European countries. Univariate Markov switching autoregressions (MS-AR) are used for individual countries in order to detect changes in the mean growth rate...

The link between foreign aid and economic growth remains a controversial issue in the literature, and a large share of the disagreement could be explained by differences in the data employed. Using GDP data from three different versions of the Penn World Table and the World Development Indicators, I investigate the robustness of Juselius, Møller and Tarp (2014)'s (JMT) conclusions about long-ru...

This paper analyzes the application of the Markov-switching ARCH model (Hamilton and Susmel, 1994) in improving value-at-risk (VaR) forecast. By considering a mixture of normal distributions with varying variances over different time and regimes, we find that the “spurious high persistence” found in the GARCH model is adjusted. Under relative performance and hypothesis-testing evaluations, the ...

The link between US labor cost and price inflation has weakened notably over the past three decades. In this paper we document decline analyse potential contributing factors. We consider four important trends that have shaped economy of late: (i) improved anchoring expectations; (ii) changing constellation shocks hitting economy; (iii) increased trade integration (iv) rising firm market power. ...

Two alternative methodologies are compared for identifying common trends and cycles in a set of variables. One, following Harvey, uses an unobserved components structural time series model. The other, following Vahid and Engle, is based on a multivariate BeveridgeNelson decomposition. Both approaches are applied to a four sector model of output in the UK over the period 1970Q1-1993Q2, producing...

In this paper, we propose new tests for threshold cointegration in the autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) model. The indicators in the threshold model are based on either a nonstationary or stationary threshold variable. The cointegrating vector in this paper is not pre-specified. We adopt a supremum Wald type test to account for the so-called Davies problem. The asymptotic null distributions...

The performance of a kernel HAC estimator depends on the accuracy of the estimation of the normalized curvature, an unknown quantity in the optimal bandwidth represented as the spectral density and its derivative. This paper proposes to estimate it with a general class of kernels. The AMSE of the kernel estimator and the AMSE-optimal bandwidth are derived. It is shown that the optimal bandwidth...

This paper provides empirical evidence for standard economic equilibrium relationships and shows that the estimated disequilibrium adjustment mechanisms appear running counter to intuition. For example, the German interest rate seems to adjust to Swiss rates but not vice versa implying a driving role of the Swiss with respect to the German rates. It is argued that this phenomenon is due to the ...