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Journal Article
Not your father’s recovery?
There has been much talk about a disappointing recovery in the wake of the Great Recession?that this time it is much slower. Comparing features of this recovery to past recoveries casts some doubt on that view. The comparison is made using a scaled-down version of the sophisticated and powerful models that real forecasters actually use. Applying it to real GDP growth, unemployment, inflation, and the federal funds rate suggests that the recovery looks consistent with past recoveries?at least so far.
Working Paper
Diagnosing labor market search models: a multiple-shock approach
We construct a multiple-shock version of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model to investigate the basic model?s well-known tendency to underpredict the volatility of key labor market variables. Data on U.S. job-finding and job separation probabilities are used to help estimate the parameters of a three-dimensional shock process comprising labor productivity, job separation, and matching or ?allocative? efficiency. Although our multiple-shock model generates some more volatility, it has counterfactual implications for the cyclicality of unemployment and vacancies. Our second ...
Journal Article
Shocks and the economic outlook
The U.S. economy has recently been hit by a number of supply shocks, and businesses and consumers have seen oil, food, and materials prices rise as a result. Such shocks typically take several years to play themselves out completely. I apply a downsized version of a macroeconomic forecasting model in use at the Cleveland Fed to project the likely quantitative impact of the shocks on GDP growth and consumer prices.
Report
A 14-Variable Mixed-Frequency VAR Model
This paper describes recent modifications to the mixed-frequency model vector autoregression (MF-VAR) constructed by Schorfheide and Song (2012). The changes to the model are restricted solely to the set of variables included in the model; all other aspects of the model remain unchanged. Forecast evaluations are conducted to gauge the accuracy of the revised model to standard benchmarks and the original model.
Working Paper
A medium scale forecasting model for monetary policy
This paper presents a 16-variable Bayesian VAR forecasting model of the U.S. economy for use in a monetary policy setting. The variables that comprise the model are selected not only for their effectiveness in forecasting the primary variables of interest, but also for their relevance to the monetary policy process. In particular, the variables largely coincide with those of an augmented New-Keynesian DSGE model. We provide out-of sample forecast evaluations and illustrate the computation and use of predictive densities and fan charts. Although the reduced form model is the focus of the ...
Working Paper
Diagnosing labor market search models: a multiple-shock approach
We construct a multiple shock, discrete time version of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model to investigate the basic model?s well-known tendency to underpredict the volatility of key labor market variables. In addition to the standard labor productivity shock, we introduce shocks to matching effi ciency and job separation. We conduct two set of experiments. First, we estimate the joint probability distribution of shocks that simultaneously satisfy the observed data and the fi rst-order conditions of the multiple-shock model, and then simulate its properties. Although the ...
Working Paper
Diagnosing labor market search models: a multiple-shock approach
This paper constructs a multiple-shock version of the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model to investigate the basic model?s well-known tendency to under predict the volatility of key labor market variables. Data on U.S. job finding and job separation probabilities are used to help estimate the parameters of a three-dimensional shock process comprising labor productivity, job separation, and matching or ?allocative? efficiency. The authors show that the Mortensen-Pissarides labor market search model requires significantly procyclical and volatile job separations to simultaneously ...