The presence of "economic slack" directly implies that an economy can grow quickly without any necessary offsetting slow growth or retrenchment in the future. Based on this link between economic slack and future economic growth, I argue for a forecastbased estimate of the output gap as a measure...

Motivated by the increasing use of forward guidance, we consider DSGE models in which the central bank holds the policy rate fixed for an extended period of time. Private agents’ beliefs about how long the fixed-rate regime will last influences current output and inflation. We estimate the...

This paper develops an extended version of Turner, Startz, and Nelson's (1989) Markov-switching model of stock returns. The model is motivated as an alternative version of Campbell and Hentschel's (1992) volatility feedback model, with news about future dividends subject to a two-state...

In this paper, we present a new approach to trend/cycle decomposition under the assumption that the trend is the permanent component and the cycle is the transitory component of an integrated time series. The permanent component is defined as the steady-state level of the series, a definition...

This paper considers the ability of simulated data from linear and nonlinear time-series models to reproduce features in U.S. real GDP data related to business cycle phases. We focus our analysis on a number of linear ARIMA models and nonlinear Markov-switching models. To determine the timing of...

This paper presents a new nonlinear time series model that captures a post-recession “bounce-back” in the level of aggregate output. While a number of studies have examined this type of business cycle asymmetry using recession-based dummy variables and threshold models, we relate the...

We consider the extent to which different time-series models can generate simulated data with the same business cycle features that are evident in U.S. real GDP. We focus our analysis on whether multivariate linear models can improve on the previously documented failure of univariate linear...