Search Results
Working Paper
A real-time historical database for the OECD
Ongoing economic globalization makes real-time international data increasingly relevant, though little work has been done on collecting and analyzing real-time data for economies other than the U.S. In this paper, we introduce and examine a new international real-time dataset assembled from original quarterly releases of 13 quarterly variables presented in the OECD Main Economic Indicators from 1962 to 1998 for 26 OECD countries. By merging this data with the current OECD real-time dataset, which starts in 1999, researchers get access to a standard, up-to-date resource. To illustrate the ...
Journal Article
Measuring the Taylor rule's performance
Using a recently developed econometric technique to determine how the original Taylor rule and subsequent variations perform using different measures of inflation, output and unemployment. We found that the rule remains relevant today, despite the changes wrought by globalization, financial market innovations and technological advances.
Journal Article
In the eye of the storm: gasoline markets after the hurricanes
Discussion Paper
Forecasting the end of the global recession: did we miss the early signs?
This paper looks at the term-structure literature to identify early signs predicting recessionary patterns in the U.S. and other developed economies. Based on the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) recession dates, we define the probability of recession as a function of the traditional yield spread, plus a forward-looking measure of growth expectations, namely the output gap growth spread. For other countries, we extend the model and make it additionally dependent on the probability of recession in the U.S. Our results indicate that most ...
Journal Article
Real-time historical dataset enhances accuracy of economic analyses
A growing body of empirical macroeconomic literature suggests that analyses using real-time data often yield substantially different?and more accurate?conclusions.
Journal Article
U.S. gasoline imports rise following temporary easing of fuel standards
EPA fuel standards were temporarily waived following major Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005 and 2008, including Katrina. The results suggest that more uniform environmental standards could help foreign refiners meet extraordinary U.S. gasoline demand.
Journal Article
Globalization and the changing nature of the U.S. economy's influence in the world
Global economic integration may have made other countries more dependent on each other and weakened their initial responses to U.S. economic fluctuations.
Working Paper
Gasoline content regulation as a trade barrier: do boutique fuels discourage fuel imports?
This paper examines the impact of Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) environmental regulations on U.S. motor gasoline import patterns. Following the damage to U.S. petroleum refining infrastructure from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the federal government provided temporary relief for several weeks from so-called boutique fuel specifications designed to improve air quality in certain regions of the country. These temporary waivers increased marketers? ability to sell gasoline originally destined for specific regional markets into a greater number of markets. We hypothesize that these same ...
Discussion Paper
The relative performance of alternative Taylor rule specifications
We look at how well several alternative Taylor rule specifications describe Federal Reserve policy decisions in real time, using the newly developed Giacomini and Rossi (2007) test for non-nested model selection in the presence of (possible) parameter instability. Further, we isolate those Taylor rule features that are most important for achieving relatively strong real-time performance. A second-order partial adjustment version of the Koenig (2004a) model performs consistently better than alternative specifications. Key features of this rule are the partial adjustment of the federal funds ...