In this paper we propose a chi-square test for identification. Our proposed test statistic is based on the distance between two shrinkage extremum estimators. The two estimators converge in probability to the same limit when identification is strong, and their asymptotic distributions are...

Existing methods for constructing confidence bands for multivatiate impulse response functions depend on auxiliary assumptions on the order of integration of the variables. Thus, they may have poor coverage at long lead times when variables are highly persistent. Solutions that have been...

This paper analyzes the robustness of the estimate of a positive productivity shock on hours to the presence of a possible unit root in hours. Estimations in levels or in first differences provide opposite conclusions. We rely on an agnostic procedure in which the researcher does not have to...

This paper studies aspects of the broad class of log-concave probability distributions that arise in the economics of uncertainty and information. Useful properties of univariate log-concave distributions are proven without imposing differentiability of density functions. We also discuss...

The three most popular univariate conditional volatility models are the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model of Engle (1982) and Bollerslev (1986), the GJR (or threshold GARCH) model of Glosten, Jagannathan and Runkle (1992), and the exponential GARCH (or...

One of the most popular univariate asymmetric conditional volatility models is the exponential GARCH (or EGARCH) specification. In addition to asymmetry, which captures the different effects on conditional volatility of positive and negative effects of equal magnitude, EGARCH can also...

An early development in testing for causality (technically, Granger non-causality) in the conditional variance (or volatility) associated with financial returns was the portmanteau statistic for non-causality in the variance of Cheng and Ng (1996). A subsequent development was the Lagrange...

The forecasting literature has identi…fied two important, broad issues. The fi…rst stylized fact is that the predictive content is unstable over time; the second is that in-sample predictive content does not necessarily translate into out-of-sample predictive ability, nor ensures the stability...

This paper proposes forecast optimality tests that can be used in unstable environments. They include tests for forecast unbiasedness, efficiency, encompassing, serial uncorrelation, and, in general, regression-based tests of forecasting ability. The proposed tests are applied to evaluate the...