This essay reviews progress in empirical economics since Leamer's (1983) critique. Leamer highlighted the benefits of sensitivity analysis, a procedure in which researchers show how their results change with changes in specification or functional form. Sensitivity analysis has had a salutary but...

In this paper, we consider a general class of vector error correction models which allow for asymmetric and non-linear error correction. We provide asymptotic results for (quasi-)maximum likelihood (QML) based estimators and tests. General hypothesis testing is considered, where testing for...

It is well established that the shocks driving many key macro-economic and financial variables display time-varying volatility. In this paper we consider estimation and hypothesis testing on the coefficients of the co-integrating relations and the adjustment coefficients in vector...

Determining the co-integrating rank of a system of variables has become a fundamental aspect of applied research in macroeconomics and finance. It is wellknown that standard asymptotic likelihood ratio tests for co-integration rank of Johansen (1996) can be unreliable in small samples with...

Many key macro-economic and ?nancial variables are characterised by permanent changes in unconditional volatility. In this paper we analyse vector autoregressions with non-stationary (unconditional) volatility of a very general form, which includes single and multiple volatility breaks as...

In a recent paper Cavaliere et al. (2012) develop bootstrap implementations of the (pseudo-) likelihood ratio [PLR] co-integration rank test and associated sequential rank determination procedure of Johansen (1996). The bootstrap samples are constructed using the restricted parameter estimates...

As an alternative to quasi-maximum likelihood, targeting estimation is a much applied estimation method for univariate and multivariate GARCH models. In terms of variance targeting estimation recent research has pointed out that at least finite fourth-order moments of the data generating process...

The common approach to evaluating a model in the structural VAR literature is to compare the impulse responses from structural VARs run on the data to the theoretical impulse responses from the model. The Sims-Cogley-Nason approach instead compares the structural VARs run on the data to...

The central finding of the recent structural vector autoregression (SVAR) literature with a differenced specification of hours is that technology shocks lead to a fall in hours. Researchers have used this finding to argue that real business cycle models are unpromising. We subject this SVAR...

Some recent developments in the macroeconometric analysis of time series are discussed in the light of Haavelmo (1944). Experimental design in econometrics is discussed and related to the case of passive observation. The general ideas are illustrated with an analysis of the long-run and...