The asymptotic distributions of the recursive out-of-sample forecast accuracy test statistics depend on stochastic integrals of Brownian motion when the models under comparison are nested. This often complicates their implementation in practice because the computation of their asymptotic...

This paper studies the importance of intertemporal substitution in consumption for the cyclical co-movement of consumption, net worth and income. We can largely explain the empirical hump-shaped consumption response to a transitory wealth increase by allowing for time-varying returns in an...

We estimate a Factor Augmented Vector autoregression (FAVAR) to identify idiosyncratic exchange rate shocks and examine the effects of these shocks on different sectors of the economy. We find that an unexpected shock to the exchange rate has significant effects on the tradable sector of the...

I introduce the essential aspects of the eigensystem vector autoregression (EVAR), which allows VARs to be specified and estimated directly in terms of their eigensystem, using univariate examples for clarity. The EVAR guarantees non-explosive dynamics and, if included, non-redundant...

Housing fever is a popular term to describe an overheated housing market or housing price bubble. Like other financial asset bubbles, housing fever can inflict harm on the real economy, as indeed the US housing bubble did in the period following 2006 leading up to the general financial crisis...

This paper investigates the existence of speculative bubbles in the US national and 21 regional housing markets over three decades (1978-2015). A new method for real-time monitoring exuberance in housing markets is proposed. By taking changes in the macroeconomic conditions (such as interest...

A general procedure is proposed to identify changes in asset return interdependence over time using entropy theory. The approach provides a decomposition of interdependence in terms of comoments including coskewness, cokurtosis and covolatility as well as more traditional measures based on...

We test the predictive accuracy of forecasts of the number of COVID-19 fatalities produced by several forecasting teams and collected by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the first and second waves of the epidemic in the United States. We find three main...

A new test for financial market contagion based on changes in extremal dependence defined as co-kurtosis and co-volatility is developed to identify the propagation mechanism of shocks across international financial markets. The proposed approach captures changes in various aspects of the asset...

Do illegal drugs foster public corruption? To estimate the causal effect of drugs on public corruption in California, we adopt the synthetic control method and exploit the fact that crack cocaine markets emerged asynchronously across the United States. We focus on California because crack...