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Jel Classification:E27 

Working Paper
Forecasting U.S. Economic Activity with a Small Information Set

We provide a parsimonious setup for forecasting U.S. GDP growth and the unemployment rate based on a few fundamental drivers. This setup yields forecasts that are reasonably accurate compared with private-sector and Federal Reserve forecasts over the 1984–2019 and post COVID-19 pandemic periods. This result is achieved by jointly estimating the processes for GDP growth and the unemployment rate, with the constraint that GDP and unemployment follow Okun’s law in first differences. This setup can be easily extended to replace the variables in the information set with factors that might ...
Working Papers , Paper 25-4

Working Paper
Disentangling rent index differences: data, methods, and scope

Working Papers , Paper 22-38

Working Paper
Supply-Side Effects of Pandemic Mortality: Insights from an Overlapping-Generations Model

We use an overlapping generation model to explore the implications of mortality during pandemics for the economy's productive capacity. Under current epidemiological projections for the progression of COVID-19, our model suggests that mortality will have, in itself, at most small effects on output and factor prices. The reason is that projected mortality is small in proportion to the population and skewed toward individuals who are retired from the labor force. That said, we show that if the spread of COVID-19 is not contained, or if the ongoing pandemic were to follow a mortality pattern ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2020-060

Working Paper
Credit card utilization and consumption over the life cycle and business cycle

The revolving credit available to consumers changes substantially over the business cycle, life cycle, and for individuals. We show that debt changes at the same time as credit, so credit utilization is remarkably stable. From ages 20?40, for example, credit card limits grow by more than 700 percent, and yet utilization holds steadily at around 50 percent. We estimate a structural model of life-cycle consumption and credit use in which credit cards can be used for payments, precautionary smoothing, and life-cycle smoothing, uniting their monetary and revolving credit functions. Our estimates ...
Working Papers , Paper 17-14

Working Paper
Selecting Primal Innovations in DSGE models

DSGE models are typically estimated assuming the existence of certain primal shocks that drive macroeconomic fluctuations. We analyze the consequences of estimating shocks that are "non-existent" and propose a method to select the primal shocks driving macroeconomic uncertainty. Forcing these non-existing shocks in estimation produces a downward bias in the estimated internal persistence of the model. We show how these distortions can be reduced by using priors for standard deviations whose support includes zero. The method allows us to accurately select primal shocks and estimate model ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2017-20

Working Paper
Heterogeneity in the Dynamics of Disaggregate Unemployment

This paper explores the role that unobserved heterogeneity within an observed category plays in the dynamics of disaggregate unemployment and in the cross-sectional differences across individuals of the duration of unemployment spells. The distribution of unobserved heterogeneity is characterized as a mixture of two distributions with each mean and weight determined by the inflows and outflows of workers with unobserved types H and L, which are identified based on the nonlinear state-space model of Ahn and Hamilton (2016). I found that the contribution of each factor to the dynamics of ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2016-063

Working Paper
Words Speak as Loudly as Actions: Central Bank Communication and the Response of Equity Prices to Macroeconomic Announcements

While the literature has already widely documented the effects of macroeconomic news announcements on asset prices, as well as their asymmetric impact during good and bad times, we focus on the reaction to news based on the description of the state of the economy as painted by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statements. We develop a novel FOMC sentiment index using textual analysis techniques, and find that news has a bigger (smaller) effect on equity prices during bad (good) times as described by the FOMC sentiment index. Our analysis suggests that the FOMC sentiment index offers a ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2021-074

Working Paper
Approximating Time Varying Structural Models With Time Invariant Structures

The paper studies how parameter variation affects the decision rules of a DSGE model and structural inference. We provide diagnostics to detect parameter variations and to ascertain whether they are exogenous or endogenous. Identifi cation and inferential distortions when a constant parameter model is incorrectly assumed are examined. Likelihood and VAR-based estimates of the structural dynamics when parameter variations are neglected are compared. Time variations in the financial frictions of Gertler and Karadi's (2010) model are studied.
Working Paper , Paper 15-10

Working Paper
Heterogeneity and Unemployment Dynamics

This paper develops new estimates of flows into and out of unemployment that allow for unobserved heterogeneity across workers as well as direct effects of unemployment duration on unemployment-exit probabilities. Unlike any previous paper in this literature, we develop a complete dynamic statistical model that allows us to measure the contribution of different shocks to the short-run, medium-run, and long-run variance of unemployment as well as to specific historical episodes. We find that changes in the inflows of newly unemployed are the key driver of economic recessions and identify an ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2016-12

Working Paper
Forecasting Consumption Spending Using Credit Bureau Data

This paper considers whether the inclusion of information contained in consumer credit reports might improve the predictive accuracy of forecasting models for consumption spending. To investigate the usefulness of aggregate consumer credit information in forecasting consumption spending, this paper sets up a baseline forecasting model. Based on this model, a simulated real-time, out-of-sample exercise is conducted to forecast one-quarter ahead consumption spending. The exercise is run again after the addition of credit bureau variables to the model. Finally, a comparison is made to test ...
Working Papers , Paper 20-22

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Ferroni, Filippo 5 items

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