We identify a ‘risk news' shock in a vector autoregression (VAR), modifying Barsky and Sims’s procedure, while incorporating sign restrictions to simultaneously identify monetary policy, technology and demand shocks. The VAR-identifed risk news shock is estimated to account for around 2%-12%...

Over time, economic statistics are refined. This means that newer data is typically less well measured than old data. Time variation in measurement error like this influences how forecasts should be made. We show how modelling the behaviour of the statistics agency generates both an estimate of...

In this paper we explore the consequences for forecasting of the following two facts: first, that over time statistical agencies revise and improve published data, so that observations on more recent events are those that are least well measured. Second, that economies are such that observations...

This paper derives the optimal lending contract in the financial accelerator model of Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (BGG). The optimal contract includes indexation to the aggregate return on capital, household consumption, and the return to internal funds. This triple indexation results in a...