Due to their indeterminacies, static and dynamic factor models require identifying assumptions to guarantee uniqueness of the parameter estimates. The indeterminacy of the parameter estimates with respect to orthogonal transformations is known as the rotation problem. The typical strategy in...

Due to their well-known indeterminacies, factor models require identifying assumptions to guarantee unique parameter estimates. For Bayesian estimation, these identifying assumptions are usually implemented by imposing constraints on certain model parameters. This strategy, however, may result...

The present value model of the current account has been very popular, as it provides an optimal benchmark to which actual current account series have often been compared. We show why persistence in observed current account data makes the estimated optimal series very sensitive to small-sample...

Researchers seldom find evidence of I(2) in exchange rates, prices, and other macroeconomics time series when they test the order of integration using univariate Dickey-Fuller tests. In contrast, when using the multivariate ML trace test we frequently find double unit roots in the data. Our...

This paper proposes the econometric evaluation of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) in the euro area, under a particular specification of the adaptive learning hypothesis. The key assumption is that agents? perceived law of motion is a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model, whose coefficients...

I apply the Johansen and Swensen (1999, 2004) method of testing exact rational expectations within the cointegrated VAR (Vector Auto-Regressive) model, to testing the New Keynesian (NK) model. This method permits the testing of rational expectation systems, while allowing for non-stationary...

All economists say that they want to take their model to the data. But with incomplete and highly imperfect data, doing so is difficult and requires carefully matching the assumptions of the model with the statistical properties of the data. The cointegrated VAR (CVAR) offers a way of doing so....

This paper investigates within a SVAR framework the effects of anticipated monetary policy in the euro area. Building on a procedure recently proposed by Cochrane which yields the response of output to an anticipated monetary policy impulse, we show that in the past twenty years anticipated...

In the past decades, risk management in the financial community has been dominated by data-intensive statistical methods which rely on short historical time series to estimate future risk. Many observers consider this approach as a contributor to the current financial crisis, as a long period of...

In this paper, we explore the role of labor markets for monetary policy in the euro area in a New Keynesian model in which labor markets are characterized by search and matching frictions. We first investigate to which extent a more flexible labor market would alter the business cycle behavior...