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Working Paper
Implications of real-time data for forecasting and modeling expectations
This note extends the analysis in Stark and Croushore (2001) with an emphasis on the importance of data vintage for survey forecasts and modeling expectations. For both of these types of empirical exercises, results suggest that the choice of latest available or real-time data is critical for variables subject to large level revisions, but almost irrelevant for variables subject to only small revisions. Other forecasting practices were examined, with some surprising results.
Journal Article
How do data revisions affect the evaluation and conduct of monetary policy?
Many economic data series are revised as more comprehensive information becomes available and as methodologies improve. Even the latest available data are subject to uncertainty, and at some point historical data may be replaced by more accurately measured observations. Because monetary policy decisions are made with an eye to the state of the economy, data uncertainty complicates the evaluation and conduct of monetary policy. ; Kozicki focuses on revisions to data that policymakers often examine when assessing monetary policy options. While other studies have looked at the impact of data ...
Journal Article
Parsing shocks: real-time revisions to gap and growth projections for Canada
The output gap - the deviation of output from potential output - has played an important role in the conduct of monetary policy in Canada. This paper reviews the Bank of Canada's definition of potential output, as well as the use of the output gap in monetary policy. Using a real-time staff economic projection dataset from 1994 through 2005, a period during which the staff used the Quarterly Projection Model to construct economic projections, the authors investigate the relationship between shocks (data revisions or real-time projection errors) and revisions to projections of key ...
Working Paper
Term premia : endogenous constraints on monetary policy
Monetary policy evaluation using structural macro models suggests that historical monetary policy responds less aggressively to inflation and the output gap than would an optimal policy rule. However, these results are obtained using models with constant term premia. This paper shows how term premia may depend on the policy rule specification and policy rate uncertainty. A more aggressive policy rule involves an economically important increase in term premia. Consequently, conclusions about the specification of optimal monetary policy rules based on counterfactual simulations of models that ...
Working Paper
Breathing room for beta
This paper argues that a test of beta insignificance, commonly used in empirical studies of the CAPM, predisposes studies toward rejecting the CAPM. Under the null hypothesis of these tests, the CAPM is false. Consequently, insufficient evidence to reject the null is taken as sufficient evidence to reject the CAPM. Simulations suggest that this framework typically leads to false rejection rates of more than 1/2. An alternative test, with a null hypothesis consistent with the CAPM, is proposed. Based on statistics from published studies, the proposed test does not reject the CAPM.
Working Paper
Term structure views of monetary policy
Term structure models and many descriptions of the transmission of monetary policy rest on the empirical relevance of the expectations hypothesis. Small differences in the perceived policy reaction function in VAR models of agent expectations strongly influence the relevance in the transmission mechanism of the expected short rate component of bond yields. Mean-reverting or difference-stationary characterizations of interest rates require large and volatile term premiums to match the observable term structure. However, short rate descriptions that capture shifting perceptions of long-horizon ...
Working Paper
Vector rational error correction
Systems of forward-looking linear decision rules can be formulated as vector "rational" error correction models. The closed-form solution of the restricted error corrections is derived, and a full-information estimator is suggested. The error correction format indicates that the assumptions of convex adjustment costs and rational expectations impose different types of a priori restrictions on the dynamic structure of the error corrections. An empirical model of the producer decision rule for capital investment illustrates that the data rejects dynamic restrictions imposed by a standard ...
Working Paper
Alternative sources of the lag dynamics of inflation
Data on credit ratings by the agencies with the legal status of Nationally-Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs) show some tendency for one-day downgrades that start from the lowest investment grade, BBB-, to travel more grades than those from neighboring grades. This would be consistent with the lower threshold of the NRSROs? grade BBB- being at a substantial default probability, but also could occur simply because downgrades to junk severely impair some firms? operations. A comparison of data from a non-NRSRO agency and an NRSRO shows that the latter?s regrades from BBB moved ...
Working Paper
Moving endpoints and the internal consistency of agents' ex ante forecasts
Forecasts by rational agents contain embedded initial and terminal boundary conditions. Standard time series models generate two types of long-run "endpoints"---fixed endpoints and moving average endpoints. Neither can explain the shifting endpoints implied by postwar movements in the cross-section of forward rate forecasts in the term structure or by post-1979 changes in survey estimates of expected inflation. Multiperiod forecasts by a broader class of "moving endpoint" time series models provide substantially improved tracking of the historical term structure and generally support the ...
Journal Article
Longer-term perspectives on the yield curve and monetary policy
In the spring of 2004, there was widespread expectation in financial markets that the Federal Reserve would shortly begin the process of raising its federal funds rate target back toward a more normal level. At the time, there was considerable concern that removing policy accommodation could lead to a sharp rise in long-term interest rates that might roil financial markets or slow the economic recovery. Much of this concern was based on the sizable increases in long-term rates that occurred when the Federal Reserve tightened policy in 1994-95 and 1999-2000. In contrast to the conventional ...