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...

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...

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...

This article is concerned with the estimation of linear regression models with uncertainty about the choice of the explanatory variables. We introduce the Stata commands bma and wals which implement, respectively, the exact Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) estimator and the Weighted Average Least...

Pro-Poor Growth (PPG) is the vision of combining high growth rates with poverty reduction.Due to the myriad of possible determinants of growth and poverty a unique theoretical model for guiding empirical work on PPG is absent, though.Bayesian Model Averaging is a statistically robust framework...