Search Results
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
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
The demand for broad money in the United Kingdom, 1878-1993
Using annual data from Friedman and Schwartz (1982), Hendry and Ericsson (1991a) developed an empirical model of the demand for broad money in the United Kingdom over 1878-1975. We update that model over 1976-1993, accounting for changed data definitions and clarifying the concept of constancy. With appropriate measures of opportunity cost and credit deregulation, the model's parameters are empirically constant over the extended sample, which was economically turbulent. Policy implications follow for parameter nonconstancy and predictive failure, causation between money and prices, monetary ...
Working Paper
The fragility of sensitivity analysis: an encompassing perspective
Robustness and fragility in Leamer's sense are defined with respect to a particular coefficient over a class of models. This paper shows that inclusion of the data generation process in that class of models is neither necessary nor sufficient for robustness. This result holds even if the properly specified model has well-determined, statistically significant coefficients. The encompassing principle explains how this result can occur. Encompassing also provides a link to a more common-sense notion of robustness, which is still a desirable property empirically; and encompassing clarifies recent ...
Working Paper
Hazards in implementing a monetary conditions index
Some recent studies have suggested constructing a Monetary Conditions Index (or MCI) to serve as an indicator of monetary policy stance. The central banks of Canada, Sweden, and Norway all construct an MCI and (to varying degrees) use it in conducting monetary policy. Empirically, an MCI is calculated as the weighted sum of changes in a short-term interest rate and the exchange rate relative to values in a baseline year. The weights aim to reflect these variables' effects on longer-term focuses of policy -- economic activity and inflation. This paper derives analytical and empirical ...
Working Paper
The ET interview: professor David F. Hendry
This interview for Econometric Theory explores David Hendry's research. Issues discussed include estimation and inference for nonstationary time series; econometric methodology; strategies, concepts, and criteria for empirical modeling; the general-to-specific approach, as implemented in the computer packages PcGive and PcGets; computer-automated model selection procedures; David's textbook Dynamic Econometrics; Monte Carlo techniques (PcNaive); evaluation of these developments in simulation studies and in empirical investigations of consumer expenditure, money demand, inflation, and the ...
Working Paper
An econometric analysis of UK money demand in MONETARY TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE UNITED KINGDOM by Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz
This paper evaluates an empirical model of UK money demand developed by Friedman and Schwartz in Monetary Trends... .Testing reveals mis-specification and hence the potential for an improved model. Using recursive procedures on their annual data, we obtain a better-fitting, constant, dynamic error-correction (cointegration) model. Results on exogeneity and encompassing imply that our money-demand model is interpretable as a model of money but not of prices since its constancy holds only conditional on contemporaneous prices.
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
Modeling the demand for narrow money in the United Kingdom and the United States
Despite the importance of well-specified empirical money-demand functions for inference, forecasting, and policy, problems in modeling have arisen concerning the economic theories of money demand, the data, institutional frameworks, financial innovation, and econometric implementation. By developing constant, data-coherent M1 demand equations for the UK and the US, we investigate these issues and explain such puzzles as "missing money", the great velocity decline, and the recent explosion in M1. The endogeneity of money, the Lucas critique, and the non-invertibility of our M1 models are ...
Working Paper
A framework for economic forecasting
This paper proposes a tripartite framework of design, evaluation, and post-evaluation analysis for generating and interpreting economic forecasts. This framework's value is illustrated by re-examining mean square forecast errors from dynamic models and nonlinearity biases from empirical forecasts of U.S. external trade. Previous studies have examined properties such as nonlinearity bias and the possible nonmonotonicity and nonexistence of mean square forecast errors in isolation from other aspects of the forecasting process, resulting in inefficient forecasting techniques and seemingly ...