We consider forecast combination and, indirectly, model selection for VAR models when there is uncertainty about which variables to include in the model in addition to the forecast variables. The key difference from traditional Bayesian variable selection is that we also allow for uncertainty...

Structural VARs have been extensively used in empirical macroeconomics during the last two decades, particularly in analyses of monetary policy. Existing Bayesian procedures for structural VARs are at best confined to a severly limited handling of cointegration restrictions. This paper extends...

A neglected aspect of the otherwise fairly well developed Bayesian analysis of cointegration is the point estimation of the cointegration space. It is pointed out here that, due to the well known non-identification of the cointegration vectors, the parameter space is not an inner product space...

This paper analyzes the forecasting performance of an open economy DSGE model, estimated with Bayesian methods, for the Euro area during 1994Q1-2002Q4. We compare the DSGE model and a few variants of this model to various reduced form forecasting models such as vector autoregressions (VAR) and...

Vector autoregressions have steadily gained in popularity since their introduction in econometrics 25 years ago. A drawback of the otherwise fairly well developed methodology is the inability to incorporate prior beliefs regarding the system's steady state in a satisfactory way. Such prior...

This paper addresses two important questions that have, so far, been studied separately in the literature. First, the paper aims at explaining the high volatility of long-term interest rates observed in the data, which is hard to replicate using standard macro models. Building a small-scale...

"Leaning against the wind" – a tighter monetary policy than necessary for stabilizing inflation around the inflation target and unemployment around a long-run sustainable rate – has been justified as a way of reducing household indebtedness. In a recent paper Lars Svensson claims that this...

We set up and estimate a structural unobserved components open economy model for the rate of unemployment and the real exchange rate in Sweden. This approach enables us to simultaneously determine changes in both cyclical and equilibrium rates. Our results show that the Natural Rate/NAIRU has...

In this paper we examine whether data from business tendency surveys are useful for forecasting the macro economy in the short run. Our analyses primarily concern the growth rates of real GDP but we also evaluate forecasts of other variables such as unemployment, price and wage inflation,...