Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 15.
(refine search)
Working Paper
What does financial volatility tell us about macroeconomic fluctuations?
This paper provides an extensive analysis of the predictive ability of financial volatility measures for economic activity. We construct monthly measures of stock and bond market volatility from daily returns and model volatility as composed of a long-run component that is common across all series, and a set of idiosyncratic short-run components. Based on powerful in-sample predictive ability tests, we find that the stock volatility measures and the common factor significantly improve short-term forecasts of conventional financial indicators. A real-time out of sample assessment yields a ...
Journal Article
International business cycles: G7 and OECD countries
The progressive globalization of markets has sparked a worldwide interest in using economic indicators to analyze cyclical fluctuations. Governments and the private sector seeking to conduct their activities in light of both national and international economic conditions could benefit from international indicators that serve as a warning system to detect recessions in major economic partners and in industrialized countries as a whole. ; This article constructs just such a warning system. Using a Markov-switching dynamic factor model with a self-adjusting variable-bandwidth filter, the authors ...
Report
Markov switching in disaggregate unemployment rates
We develop a dynamic factor model with Markov switching to examine secular and business cycle fluctuations in U.S. unemployment rates. We extract the common dynamics among unemployment rates disaggregated for seven age groups. The framework allows analysis of the contribution of demographic factors to secular changes in unemployment rates. In addition, it allows examination of the separate contribution of changes due to asymmetric business cycle fluctuations. We find strong evidence in favor of the common factor and of the switching between high and low unemployment rate regimes. We also find ...
Working Paper
Forecasting Brazilian output in the presence of breaks: a comparison of linear and nonlinear models
This paper compares the forecasting performance of linear and nonlinear models under the presence of structural breaks for the Brazilian real GDP growth. The Markov-switching models proposed by Hamilton (1989) and its generalized version proposed by Lam (1991) are applied to quarterly GDP from 1975:1 to 2000:2 allowing for breaks at the Collor Plans. The probabilities of recessions are used to analyze the Brazilian business cycle. The ability of each model in forecasting out-of-sample the growth rates of GDP is examined. The forecasting ability of the two models is also compared with linear ...
Working Paper
Microfoundations of inflation persistence in the New Keynesian Phillips curve
This paper proposes a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that endogenously generates inflation persistence. We assume that although firms change prices periodically, they face convex costs that preclude optimal adjustment. In essence, the model assumes that price stickiness arises from both the frequency and size of price adjustments. The model is estimated using Bayesian techniques, and the results strongly support both sources of price stickiness in the U.S. data. In contrast with traditional sticky price models, the framework yields inflation inertia, a delayed effect of monetary ...
Working Paper
A Dynamic Factor Model of the Yield Curve as a Predictor of the Economy
In this paper, we propose an econometric model of the joint dynamic relationship between the yield curve and the economy to predict business cycles. We examine the predictive value of the yield curve to forecast future economic growth as well as the beginning and end of economic recessions at the monthly frequency. The proposed nonlinear multivariate dynamic factor model takes into account not only the popular term spread but also information extracted from the level and curvature of the yield curve and from macroeconomic variables. The nonlinear model is used to investigate the ...
Report
Recent changes in the U.S. business cycle
The U.S. business cycle expansion that started in March 1991 is the longest on record. This paper uses statistical techniques to examine whether this expansion is a onetime unique event or whether its length is a result of a change in the stability of the U.S. economy. Bayesian methods are used to estimate a common factor model that allows for structural breaks in the dynamics of a wide range of macroeconomic variables. We find strong evidence that a reduction in volatility is common to the series examined. Further, the reduction in volatility implies that future expansions will be ...
Journal Article
Leading indicators of country risk and currency crises: the Asian experience
Most emerging capital markets in recent years adopted a system that narrowly pegs their currencies? exchange rates to the U.S. dollar. While such a system has a number of advantages, it makes a country vulnerable to shocks in mobile international capital markets and can lead to reactive strategies that can drive the country into a currency crisis and inflationary recession. ; This article aims to construct an early warning system for international currency crises using financial variables reflecting investors? expectations and banking distress, which are highly sensitive to changes in the ...
Working Paper
A comparison of the real-time performance of business cycle dating methods
This paper evaluates the ability of formal rules to establish U.S. business cycle turning point dates in real time. We consider two approaches, a nonparametric algorithm and a parametric Markov-switching dynamic-factor model. In order to accurately assess the real-time performance of these rules, we construct a new unrevised "real-time" data set of employment, industrial production, manufacturing and trade sales, and personal income. We then apply the rules to this data set to simulate the accuracy and timeliness with which they would have identified the NBER business cycle chronology had ...
Report
Nonlinear risk
This paper proposes a flexible framework for analyzing the joint time series properties of the level and volatility of expected excess stock returns. An unobservable dynamic factor is constructed as a nonlinear proxy for the market risk premia with its first moment and conditional volatility driven by a latent Markov variable. The model allows for the possibility that the risk-return relationship may not be constant across the Markov states or over time. We find a distinct business cycle pattern in the conditional expectation and variance of the monthly value-weighted excess return. ...