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Working Paper
Lessons from the latest data on U.S. productivity
Productivity growth is carefully scrutinized by macroeconomists because it plays key roles in understanding private savings behaviour, the sources of macroeconomic shocks, the evolution of international competitiveness and the solvency of public pension systems, among other things. However, estimates of recent and expected productivity growth rates suffer from two potential problems: (i) recent estimates of growth trends are imprecise, and (ii) recently published data often undergo important revisions. This paper documents the statistical (un)reliability of several measures of aggregate ...
Working Paper
The reliability of inflation forecasts based on output gap estimates in real time
A stable predictive relationship between inflation and the output gap, often referred to as a Phillips curve, provides the basis for countercyclical monetary policy in many models. In this paper, we evaluate the usefulness of alternative univariate and multivariate estimates of the output gap for predicting inflation. Many of the ex post output gap measures we examine appear to be quite useful for predicting inflation. However, forecasts using real-time estimates of the same measures do not perform nearly as well. The relative usefulness of real-time output gap estimates diminishes further ...
Working Paper
Fiscal policy: ex ante and ex post
The surge in fiscal deficits since 2008 has put a renewed focus on the authors? understanding of fiscal policy. The interaction of fiscal and monetary policy during this period has also been the subject of much discussion and analysis. This paper gives new insight into past fiscal policy and its influence on monetary policy by examining the U.S. Federal Reserve Board staff?s Greenbook forecasts of fiscal policy. The authors create a real-time database of the Greenbook forecasts of fiscal policy, examine the forecast performance in terms of bias and effciency, and explore the implications for ...
Working Paper
Trend-cycle decomposition: implications from an exact structural identification
A well-documented property of the Beveridge-Nelson trend-cycle decomposition is the perfect negative correlation between trend and cycle innovations. We show how this may be consistent with a structural model where trend shocks enter the cycle, or cyclic shocks enter the trend and that identification restrictions are necessary to make this structural distinction. A reduced-form unrestricted version such as that of Morley, Nelson and Zivot (2003) is compatible with either option, but cannot distinguish which is relevant. We discuss economic interpretations and implications using US real GDP ...
Working Paper
The reliability of output gap estimates in real time
Compared to its central role in policy discussions in the United States and most other developed countries, the reliability of the measurement of the output gap has attracted relatively little academic study. Furthermore, both the academic literature and the debate among practitioners have tended to neglect a key factor. Although in a policy setting it is necessary to estimate the current (i.e. end-of-sample) output gap without the benefit of knowing the future, most studies concentrate on measurement that employs data that only become available later. In this paper we examine the reliability ...
Working Paper
FISCAL SURPRISES AT THE FOMC
This paper provides a detailed examination of a new set of fiscal forecasts for the U.S. assembled by Croushore and van Norden (2017) from FOMC briefing books. The data are of particular interest because (1) they afford a look at fiscal forecasts over six complete business cycles and several fiscal policy regimes, covering both peacetime and several wars, (2) the forecasts were precisely those presented to monetary policymakers, (3) they include frequently updated estimates of both actual and cyclically adjusted deficits, (4) unlike most other U.S. fiscal forecasts, they were neither partisan ...