We develop an estimated time-series model of revisions of U.S. payroll employment in order to obtain more accurate filtered estimates of the "true" or underlying condition of U.S. employment. Our estimates of "true" employment are filtered, according to an estimated signal-plus-noise (S+N)...

This paper develops and illustrates the multi-step generalization of the standard single-step perturbation (SSP) method or MSP. In SSP, we can think of evaluating at x the computed approximate solution based on x0, as moving from x0 to x in "one big step" along the straight-line vector x-x0. By...

Total factor productivity (TFP) computed as Solow-residuals could be subject to input-substitution bias for two reasons. First, the Cobb-Douglas (CD) production function restricts all input substitutions to one. Second, observed inputs generally differ from optimal inputs, so that inputs...

We quantify the inefficiency of the retirement component of the US social security system within a model where agents receive idiosyncratic labor-productivity shocks that are privately observed

This paper considers two models to deal with an outcome variable that contains a large fraction of zeros, such as individual expenditures on health care: a sample-selection model and a two-part model. The sample-selection model uses two possibly correlated processes to determine the outcome: a...

This paper compares the goodness-of-fit and the stability of six methods used to extract risk-neutral probability density functions from currency option prices. We first compare five existing methods commonly employed to recover risk-neutral density functions from option prices. Specifically, we...

This paper investigates the aggregate fluctuations in production and demand components when a firm's investment decision takes the form of (S,s) policies. In the field of large-dimensional non-linear dynamical systems, it is a commonly accepted view that a system of coupled non-linear...

Previous efforts to compare the costs and benefits of fixed versus flexible exchange rate regimes have ignored the fact that it takes significant resources and time to develop export markets, and they have not included an analysis of the firm-level decision to enter or exit export markets. This...

Recently, there has been many applications of perturbation methods for solving stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models. However, in standard applications of the perturbation method, the Taylor expansion is always computed around the deterministic steady state. Because of nonlinearities,...

We analyze the microfoundations of the Phillips curve, a key relationship in general macroeconomics and models of monetary policy in particular. The form in current widespread use includes both forward looking expected inflation and lagged inflation. The presence of lagged inflation is necessary...