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Working Paper
Fortune or virtue: time-variant volatilities versus parameter drifting
This paper compares the role of stochastic volatility versus changes in monetary policy rules in accounting for the time-varying volatility of U.S. aggregate data. Of special interest to the authors is understanding the sources of the great moderation of business cycle fluctuations that the U.S. economy experienced between 1984 and 2007. To explore this issue, the authors build a medium-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with both stochastic volatility and parameter drifting in the Taylor rule and they estimate it non-linearly using U.S. data and Bayesian methods. ...
Working Paper
Reading the recent monetary history of the U.S., 1959-2007
The authors report the results of the estimation of a rich dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy with both stochastic volatility and parameter drifting in the Taylor rule. They use the results of this estimation to examine the recent monetary history of the U.S. and to interpret, through this lens, the sources of the rise and fall of the great American inflation from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and of the great moderation of business cycle fluctuations between 1984 and 2007.
Working Paper
Price-Level Determination Under the Gold Standard
We present a micro-founded monetary model of a small open economy to examine the behavior of money, prices, and output under the gold standard. In particular, we formally analyze Hume’s celebrated price-specie flow mechanism. Our framework incorporates the influence of international trade on the money supply in the Home country through gold flows. In the short run, a positive correlation exists between the quantity of money and the price level. Additionally, we demonstrate that money is non-neutral during the transition to the steady state, which has implications for welfare. While the gold ...
Working Paper
Supply-side policies and the zero lower bound
This paper examines how supply-side policies may play a role in fighting a low aggregate demand that traps an economy at the zero lower bound (ZLB) of nominal interest rates. Future increases in productivity or reductions in mark-ups triggered by supply-side policies generate a wealth effect that pulls current consumption and output up. Since the economy is at the ZLB, increases in the interest rates do not undo this wealth effect, as we will have in the case outside the ZLB. The authors illustrate this mechanism with a simple two-period New Keynesian model. They discuss possible objections ...
Working Paper
Estimating dynamic equilibrium models with stochastic volatility
We propose a novel method to estimate dynamic equilibrium models with stochastic volatility. First, we characterize the properties of the solution to this class of models. Second, we take advantage of the results about the structure of the solution to build a sequential Monte Carlo algorithm to evaluate the likelihood function of the model. The approach, which exploits the profusion of shocks in stochastic volatility models, is versatile and computationally tractable even in large-scale models, such as those often employed by policy-making institutions. As an application, we use our algorithm ...
Working Paper
Comparing dynamic equilibrium economies to data
This paper studies the properties of the Bayesian approach to estimation and comparison of dynamic equilibrium economies. Both tasks can be performed even if the models are nonnested, misspecified, and nonlinear. First, the authors show that Bayesian methods have a classical interpretation: asymptotically the parameter point estimates converge to their pseudotrue values, and the best model under the Kullback-Leibler will have the highest posterior probability. Second, they illustrate the strong small sample behavior of the approach using a well-known application: the U.S. cattle cycle. ...
Working Paper
Comparing solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies
This paper compares solution methods for dynamic equilibrium economies. The authors compute and simulate the stochastic neoclassical growth model with leisure choice using Undetermined Coefficients in levels and in logs, Finite Elements, Chebyshev Polynomials, Second and Fifth Order Perturbations and Value Function Iteration for several calibrations. The authors document the performance of the methods in terms of computing time, implementation complexity and accuracy and they present some conclusions about their preferred approaches based on the reported evidence.
Working Paper
Convergence properties of the likelihood of computed dynamic models
This paper studies the econometrics of computed dynamic models. Since these models generally lack a closed-form solution, economists approximate the policy functions of the agents in the model with numerical methods. But this implies that, instead of the exact likelihood function, the researcher can evaluate only an approximated likelihood associated with the approximated policy function. What are the consequences for inference of the use of approximated likelihoods? First, we show that as the approximated policy function converges to the exact policy, the approximated likelihood also ...
Working Paper
A, B, C’s, (and D’s) for understanding VARs
The dynamics of a linear (or linearized) dynamic stochastic economic model can be expressed in terms of matrices (A, B, C, D) that define a state-space system. An associated state space system (A, K, C, S) determines a vector autoregression (VAR) for observables available to an econometrician. We review circumstances in which the impulse response of the VAR resembles the impulse response associated with the economic model. We give four examples that illustrate a simple condition for checking whether the mapping from VAR shocks to economic shocks is invertible. The condition applies when there ...
Working Paper
Estimating dynamic equilibrium economies: linear versus nonlinear likelihood
This paper compares two methods for undertaking likelihood-based inference in dynamic equilibrium economies: a sequential Monte Carlo filter proposed by Fernndez-Villaverde and Rubio-Ramrez (2004) and the Kalman filter. The sequential Monte Carlo filter exploits the nonlinear structure of the economy and evaluates the likelihood function of the model by simulation methods. The Kalman filter estimates a linearization of the economy around the steady state. The authors report two main results. First, both for simulated and for real data, the sequential Monte Carlo filter delivers a ...