Opting for structural or reduced form estimation is often hard to justify if one wants to both learn about the structure of the economy and obtain accurate predictions. In this paper, we show that using both structural and reduced form estimates simultaneously can lead to more accurate policy...

Many researchers use GARCH models to generate volatility forecasts. We show, however, that such forecasts are too variable. To correct for this, we extend the GARCH model by distinguishing two regimes with different volatility levels. GARCH effects are allowed within each regime, so that our...

Most economists intuitively consider purchasing power parity (PPP) to be true. Nevertheless, quite surprisingly, the empirical literature is not very supportive for PPP. In this paper, however, we find evidence in favor of PPP using a new test. The test is embedded in a Markov regime-switching...

Two model averaging approaches are used and compared in estimating and forecasting dynamic factor models, the well-known BMA and the recently developed WALS. Both methods propose to combine frequentist estimators using Bayesian weights. We apply our framework to the Armenian economy using...

The random walk is often used to model exchange rates. According to the Lucas critique, however, policy shifts may lead to breaks in the trend of exchange rates and hence to long swings. We use a Markov regime-switching model to allow for such swings and we reject the random walk in favor of the...

Household surveys often elicit respondents' intentions or predictions of future outcomes. The survey questions may ask respondents to choose among a selection of (ordered) response categories. If panel data or repeated cross-sections are available, predictions may be compared with realized...

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has surged in Latin America (LA) since the mid 1990s. European and North American FDI is of capital importance. We investigate the FDI-growth nexus in LA allowing for different source countries, regional hetero- geneity, interaction terms with FDI, and more than...

This paper offers an alternative technique to derive the limiting distribution of residual-based statistics or, more general, the limiting distribution of statistics with estimated nuisance parameters.This technique allows us to unify many known results on two-stage estimators and tests and we...

Abstract: In specifying a regression equation, we need to determine which regressors to include, but also how these regressors are measured. This gives rise to two levels of uncertainty: concepts (level 1) and measurements within each concept (level 2). In this paper we propose a hierarchical...

Bayesian model averaging attempts to combine parameter estimation and model uncertainty in one coherent framework. The choice of prior is then critical. Within an explicit framework of ignorance we define a ‘suitable’ prior as one which leads to a continuous and suitable analog to the...