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Working Paper
How Biased Are U.S. Government Forecasts of the Federal Debt?
Government debt and forecasts thereof attracted considerable attention during the recent financial crisis. The current paper analyzes potential biases in different U.S. government agencies? one-year-ahead forecasts of U.S. gross federal debt over 1984-2012. Standard tests typically fail to detect biases in these forecasts. However, impulse indicator saturation (IIS) detects economically large and highly significant time-varying biases, particularly at turning points in the business cycle. These biases do not appear to be politically related. IIS defines a generic procedure for examining ...
Working Paper
An analogue model of phase-averaging procedures
This paper considers the statistical and econometric effect that fixed n-period phase-averaging has on time series generated by some simple dynamic processes. We focus on the variance and autocorrelation of the data series and of the disturbance term for levels and difference equations involving the phase-average data. Further, we examine the effect of phase-averaging on the erogeneity of variables in those equations and the implications phase-averaging has for conducting statistical inference. ; To illustrate our analytical results, we investigate claims by Friedman and Schwartz in their ...
Working Paper
Econometric modeling of consumers' expenditure in Venezuela
Starting from a theoretical model with optimizing economic agents, we develop a highly parsimonious econometric model of consumers' expenditure on non-durables and services in Venezuela for 1970-85. Disposable income, liquidity, and inflation determine expenditure in an economically sensible fashion. The empirical model is robust and has constant, well-determined parameter estimates. In specifying it, econometric methodology plays a fundamental role, and we address issues of empirical model design and evaluation, cointegration, exogeneity, policy analysis, and encompassing. Using the last ...
Working Paper
Cointegration, exogeneity, and policy analysis: an overview
This overview describes the concepts of cointegration and exogeneity, focusing on analytical structure, statistical inference, and implications for policy analysis. Examples help clarify the concepts. The remainder of the overview summarizes the articles in a special issue of the Journal of Policy Modeling entitled Cointegration, Exogeneity, and Policy Analysis.
Working Paper
Cointegration tests in the presence of structural breaks
Structural breaks in stationary time series can induce apparent unit roots in those series. Thus, using recently developed recursive Monte Carlo techniques, this paper investigates the properties of several cointegration tests when the marginal process of one of the variables in the cointegrating relationship is stationary with a structural break. The break has little effect on the tests' size. However, tests based on estimated error correction models generally are more powerful than Engle and Granger's two-step procedure employing the Dickey-Fuller unit root test. Discrepancies in power ...
Working Paper
Encompassing and rational expectations: how sequential corroboration can imply refutation
Even though pieces of empirical evidence individually may corroborate an economic theory, their joint existence may refute that same theory. We discuss examples concerning testing for omitted variables, simultaneity, and rational expectations in the context of general-to-simple versus simple-to-general modeling. The proposition in the first sentence strongly favors the building of empirical models which are consistent with all available evidence.
Working Paper
General-to-specific modeling: an overview and selected bibliography
This paper discusses the econometric methodology of general-to-specific modeling, in which the modeler simplifies an initially general model that adequately characterizes the empirical evidence within his or her theoretical framework. Central aspects of this approach include the theory of reduction, dynamic specification, model selection procedures, model selection criteria, model comparison, encompassing, computer automation, and empirical implementation. This paper thus reviews the theory of reduction, summarizes the approach of general-to-specific modeling, and discusses the econometrics ...
Working Paper
PC-give and David Hendry's econometric methodology
This paper summarizes David Hendry's empirical econometric methodology, unifying discussions in many of his and his co-authors' papers. Then, we describe how Hendry's suite of computer programs PC-GIVE helps users implement that methodology. Finally, we illustrate that methodology and the programs with three empirical examples: postwar narrow money demand in the United Kingdom, nominal income determination in the United Kingdom from Friedman and Schwartz (1982), and consumers' expenditure in Venezuela. These examples help clarify the methodology's central concepts, which include ...
Working Paper
Evaluating a global vector autoregression for forecasting
Global vector autoregressions (GVARs) have several attractive features: multiple potential channels for the international transmission of macroeconomic and financial shocks, a standardized economically appealing choice of variables for each country or region examined, systematic treatment of long-run properties through cointegration analysis, and flexible dynamic specification through vector error correction modeling. Pesaran, Schuermann, and Smith (2009) generate and evaluate forecasts from a paradigm GVAR with 26 countries, based on Des, di Mauro, Pesaran, and Smith (2007). The current ...
Working Paper
Predictable uncertainty in economic forecasting
This paper provides an introduction to predictable forecast uncertainty in empirical economic modelling. The sources of both predictable and unpredictable forecast uncertainty are categorized. Key features of predictable forecast uncertainty are illustrated by several analytical models, including static and dynamic models, and single-equation and multiple-equation models. Empirical models of the U.S. trade account, U.K. inflation, and U.K. real national income help clarify the issues involved.