A growing body of literature argues that the financial cycle is considerably longer in duration and larger in amplitude than the business cycle and that its distinguishing features became more pronounced over time. This paper proposes an empirical approach suitable to test these hypotheses. We...

The Beveridge-Nelson decomposition defines the trend component in terms of the eventual forecast function, as the value the series would take if it were on its long-run path. The paper in-troduces the multistep Beveridge-Nelson decomposition, which arises when the forecast function is obtained...

We apply a recently proposed Bayesian model selection technique, known as stochastic model specification search, for characterising the nature of the trend in macroeconomic time series. We illustrate that the methodology can be quite successfully applied to discriminate between stochastic and...

Few authors have studied, either asymptotically or in finite samples, the size and power of seasonal unit root tests when the data generating process [DGP] is a non-stationary alternative aside from the seasonal random walk. In this respect, Ghysels, lee and Noh (1994) conducted a simulation...

In seasonal adjustment a time series is considered as a juxtaposition of several components, the trend-cycle, and the seasonal and irregular components. The Bureau of the Census X-11 method, based on moving averages, correction of large errors and trading day adjustments, has long dominated....

We describe observation driven time series models for Student-t and EGB2 conditional distributions in which the signal is a linear function of past values of the score of the conditional distribution. These specifications produce models that are easy to implement and deal with outliers by what...

We derive computationally simple and intuitive score tests of neglected serial correlation in unobserved component univariate models using frequency domain techniques. In some common situations in which the alternative model information matrix is singular under the null, we derive one-sided...

The identification of asymmetric conditional heteroscedasticity is often based on sample cross-correlations between past and squared observations. In this paper we analyse the effects of outliers on these cross-correlations and, consequently, on the identification of asymmetric volatilities.We...

Many empirical studies find a negative correlation between the returns on the nominal spot exchange rate and the lagged forward discount. This forward discount anomaly implies that the current forward rate is a biased predictor of the future spot rate. A large number of studies in the existing...

Recent releases of X-13ARIMA-SEATS and JDemetra+ enable their users to choose between the non-parametric X-11 and the parametric ARIMA model-based approach to seasonal adjustment for any given time series without the necessity of switching between different software packages. To ease the...