This paper develops and estimates an unobserved components model for purposes of monetary policy analysis in a closed economy. Cyclical components are modeled as a multivariate linear rational expectations model of the monetary transmission mechanism, while trend components are modeled as...

Observed budget balances are an imperfect indicator of the fiscal policy stance, because fluctuations in economic activity induce automatic changes in the balance, hence the use of cyclically-adjusted balances (CAB). However, this paper shows that CABs (as measured through one of the two methods...

Compared to its central role in policy discussions in the United States and most other developed countries, the reliability of the measurement of the output gap has attracted relatively little academic study. Furthermore, both the academic literature and the debate among practitioners have...

Potential output figures are important ingredients of many macroeconomic modelsand are routinely applied by policy makers and global agencies. Despite itswidespread use, estimation of potential output is at best uncertain and dependsheavily on the model. The task of estimating potential output...

The paper reviews the basic statistical methods for estimation of the deviations from the production potential of the economy. The emphasis is put on the a-theoretical approaches. To illustrate the application of the models data for the Bulgarian economy have been used, and on the basis of the...

This paper examines the small-sample distribution of the instrumental variables (IV) estimation procedure employed by Gali and Gertler (1999) to assess the empirical fit of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) and the hybrid Phillips Curve (HPC). Their estimation method is now widely used to...

Monetary models of the business cycle often neglect the importance of investment and the capital stock in the monetary transmission mechanism. Most of the recent literature assumes either investment adjustment costs or ignores capital altogether. This paper re-takes the argument put forward by...