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Journal Article
The cyclical behavior of prices and employee compensation
Journal Article
Wage-price restraint and macroeconomic disequilibrium
An abstract for this article is not available
Journal Article
The national income and product accounts
Briefing
How useful are consumer surveys as macroeconomic indicators?
Most economic indicators attempt to summarize what happened at a particular time in the past. Consumer surveys, however, examine attitudes and are thus fundamentally different from other widely reported indicators. Some surveys, such as those that measure inflation expectations, have proven to be useful to economists and policymakers, while the evidence is more mixed for others, such as forecasts of consumer spending.
Journal Article
The irrelevance of tests for bias in series of macroeconomic forecasts
The idea of rational expectations has revolutionized macroeconomics. Several authors believe that the idea can be easily tested by a simple econometric procedure. This paper, however, presents several reasons for questioning the relevance of such tests.
Journal Article
Vector autoregressions as a tool for forecast evaluations
In his article, Vector Autoregressions as a Tool for Forecast Evaluation, Roy H. Webb proposes that VAR forecasts be used as a standard of comparison for other forecasts. He begins by explaining how conventional forecasting models are constructed and used, and summarizes a few common objections to these models. He then describes the VAR methodology and compares forecasts from a simple VAR model with those from a consulting firm that uses a conventional model and with a series of consensus forecasts. The VAR model holds its own in this competition; in fact, only the VAR model is able to ...
Journal Article
Forecasts 1984
Roy H. Webb summarizes the consensus outlook for the current year in Forecasts 1984. (A more detailed summary of individual forecasts is available in the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmonds Business Forecasts 1984.) Most forecasters are calling for a continuation of the above-average growth and relatively low inflation of 1983. However, the consensus forecast has not been very accurate in the last two years.
Journal Article
Toward more accurate macroeconomic forecasts
A growing disenchantment with conventional economic models has resulted in increased interest in forecasting with vector autoregressive (VAR) models. In this article, Roy H. Webb develops a statistical procedure for determining the best configuration of explanatory variables in the equations of a VAR model. The resulting model forecasts more accurately than a conventional VAR model and is comparable to VARs improved through other popular methods. In addition, Webbs procedure lets the data determine the form of the model and reduces the role of judgment in specifying equations, consistent with ...
Journal Article
Forecasts 1985
An abstract for this article is not available
Journal Article
The stealth budget: unfunded liabilities of the federal government
The federal budget is incomplete. Action have been taken that will require spending in the future; provision for that spending does not, however, appear in the budget accounts. As a result, stated federal spending does not reveal the total resource demands placed on the private economy and stated federal debt does not reveal the full burden that taxpayers will face in the future. The amounts involved are not trivial. Several programs had unfunded liabilities in 1989 in excess of $4 trillion, whereas the conventionally stated gross federal debt at that time was less than $3 trillion.