This paper provides an ordered probit approach that estimates the probability six months in the future of three distinct scenarios for prices: inflation, deflation, or price stability. The traditional way of forecasting inflation is to predict a single level and/or growth rate of the PCE...

This paper seeks to characterize the behavior of profits over the business cycle as a model for analyzing any economic series by a practicing business economist. It addresses three fundamental questions about profits that are common and critical to identifying the behavior of any macroeconomic...

This paper provides a one-month-ahead, macroeconomic, Bayesian Vector Autoregressive (BVAR) forecasting approach that offers several advantages over conventional short-term forecasting procedures. In particular, it produces more accurate forecasts than the Bloomberg consensus forecasts, on...

Productivity growth and improvement in a nation's standard of living are widely thought to go hand in hand. During the past 15 years, however, the gap between productivity growth and growth of living standards has widened, igniting a debate about whether a larger share of the benefits from...

Both the depth and length of the Great Recession create the impression that the economy proved impervious to monetary policy. Policy rates, such as the federal funds rate (fed funds rate), were set at record lows, but the recovery in housing, employment, and GDP were subpar at best. Now with a...

Are deep recessions typically followed by strong recoveries? This paper investigates this question. There is not a single standard definition for a deep recession or a strong recovery. Therefore, our first step is to define what constitutes a deep recession and a strong recovery. Next we examine...