One way to interpret the current policies of many central banks is that they seek to stabilize economic activity. One possible justification for such a policy is that there is volatility in macro variables that individual agents cannot insure against. We study the simplest possible extension of...

This paper analyzes the robustness of the estimate of a positive productivity shock on hours to the presence of a possible unit root in hours. Estimations in levels or in first differences provide opposite conclusions. We rely on an agnostic procedure in which the researcher does not have to...

Abstract: The paper analyzes cyclical comovements in the Mercosur area differentiating idiosyncratic from common shocks. In the Mercosur (or any region for that matter) shocks can be country-specific, affecting only one country or a specific set of countries (for example, a weather-related...

There is considerable disagreement in the empirical macro literature as to the degree of returns to scale in U.S. production. While many studies find evidence of a small degree of increasing returns, standard errors are typically large. This issue is of importance for assessing the possibility...

This paper aims at identifying the main shocks, which cause movements in real GNP. It does so by searching for two shocks in the context of a VAR model, which explain the majority of the k-step ahead prediction error variances in real GNP for horizons between 0 and 5 years. We find that two...

The output gap plays a crucial role in thinking of many inflation targeting central banks yet, the real time estimates of the output gap undergo substantial revisions as more data become available. In this paper, we use the state space framework to augment the simple Hodrick-Prescott filter with...

Cyclical components in economic time series are analysed in a Bayesian framework, thereby allowing prior notions about periodicity to be used. The method is based on a general class of unobserved component models that allow relatively smooth cycles to be extracted. Posterior densities of...

Inflation volatility has significantly declined over the last 20 years in the U.S. To find out why, I follow a structural approach. I estimate a complete New Keynesian model which imposes cross-equation restrictions on the time series of inflation, the output gap and the interest rate. I perform...

This study investigates the relationship between the measured Solow residual and demand side variables for the Korean economy. The measured Solow residuals are shown to be Granger-caused by some demand side variables such as exports, M1, and government expenditure. A vector error correction...

This paper presents a generalized two-step maximum likelihood estimation method for partially identified vector autoregressive models. We suggest a likelihood ratio test for over-identification in a sub-system and derive the asymptotics for impulse responses and forecast-error variance...