Search Results
Working Paper
Estimating probabilities of recession in real time using GDP and GDI
This work estimates Markov switching models on real time data and shows that the growth rate of gross domestic income (GDI), deflated by the GDP deflator, has done a better job recognizing the start of recessions than has the growth rate of real GDP. This result suggests that placing an increased focus on GDI may be useful in assessing the current state of the economy. In addition, the paper shows that the definition of a low-growth phase in the Markov switching models has changed over the past couple of decades. The models increasingly define this phase as an extended period of around zero ...
Working Paper
Regime-Switching Models for Estimating Inflation Uncertainty
This paper constructs regime-switching models for estimating the probability of inflation returning to its relatively high levels of variability and persistence in the 1970s and 1980s. Forecasts and probabilities of extreme events from the models are evaluated against comparable estimates from other statistical models, from surveys, and from financial markets. The paper then uses the models to construct prediction intervals around Federal Reserve Board staff forecasts of PCE price inflation, combining the recent non-parametric forecast error distribution with parametric information from the ...
Journal Article
Chile: the big saver
Working Paper
Non-Linear Phillips Curves with Inflation Regime-Switching
Building on the results in Nalewaik (FEDS 2015-93), this work models wage growth and core PCE price inflation as regime-switching processes, whose characteristics in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s differ fundamentally from their characteristics in the 1960s and from the mid-1990s to present. The key innovation here is the addition to the models of fundamental driving variables like labor-market slack, and the evidence strongly suggests a non-linear effect of slack on wage growth and core PCE price inflation that becomes much larger after labor markets tighten beyond a certain point. The ...
Working Paper
Forecasting recessions using stall speeds
This paper presents evidence that the economic stall speed concept has some empirical content, and can be moderately useful in forecasting recessions. Specifically, output tends to transition to a slow-growth phase at the end of expansions before falling into a recession, and the paper designs Markov-switching models that behave in that way. While the switching models using output growth alone produce a considerable number of false positive recession signals, adding the slope of the yield curve, the percent change in housing starts, and the change in the unemployment rate to the model reduces ...
Journal Article
Texas-Mexico trade after NAFTA
Working Paper
Missing Variation in the Great Moderation: Lack of Signal Error and OLS Regression
This paper studies measurement errors that subtract signal from true variables of interest, labeled lack of signal errors (LoSE). The effect on OLS regression of LoSE is opposite the conventional wisdom about classical measurement errors, with LoSE in the dependent variable, not the explanatory variables, causing attenuation bias under some conditions. The paper provides evidence of LoSE in US GDP growth during the period known as the Great Moderation (roughly the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s), illustrating attenuation bias in regressions of GDP growth on asset prices. These biases may have ...
Working Paper
The response of capital goods shipments to demand over the business cycle
This paper studies the behavior of producers of capital goods, examining how they set shipments in response to fluctuations in new orders. The paper establishes a stylized fact: the response of shipments to orders is more pronounced when the level of new orders is low relative to the level of shipments, usually after orders plunge in recessions. This cyclical change in firm behavior is quantitatively important, accounting for a large portion of the steep decline in equipment investment in the 2001 and 2007--9 recessions. We examine economic interpretations of this stylized fact using a model ...
Working Paper
Lack of signal error (LoSE) and implications for OLS regression: measurement error for macro data
This paper proposes a simple generalization of the classical measurement error model, introducing new measurement errors that subtract signal from the true variable of interest, in addition to the usual classical measurement errors (CME) that add noise. The effect on OLS regression of these lack of signal errors (LoSE) is opposite the conventional wisdom about CME: while CME in the explanatory variables causes attenuation bias, LoSE in the dependent variable, not the explanatory variables, causes a similar bias under some conditions. In addition, LoSE in the dependent variable shrinks the ...
Working Paper
News, noise, and estimates of the \"true\" unobserved state of the economy
Which provides a better estimate of the "true" state of the U.S. economy, gross domestic product (GDP) or gross domestic income (GDI)? Past work has assumed the difference between each estimate and the "true" state of the economy is pure noise, taking greater variability to imply lower reliability. We posit instead that each difference may be pure news; then greater variability implies higher information content and greater reliability. This is a general point, applicable to numerous situations beyond the case of combining GDP and GDI. For that particular case, we analyze various vintages ...