Unknown-breakpoint tests for possible structural change have become standard in recent years, with the most popular being the so-called Sup-F tests, whose asymptotic distribution was derived by Andrews (1993). We highlight two problems that lead to poor performance when testing for structural...

The canonical inflation specification in sticky-price rational expectations models (the new-Keynesian Phillips curve) is often criticized for failing to account for the dependence of inflation on its own lags. In response, many studies employ a “hybrid” specification in which inflation...

Is the observed correlation between current and lagged inflation a function of backward-looking inflation expectations, or do the lags in inflation regressions merely proxy for rational forward-looking expectations, as in the new-Keynesian Phillips curve? Recent research has attempted to answer...

Real equipment investment in the United States boomed in the 1990s, led by soaring investment in computers. We find that traditional aggregate econometric models completely fail to capture the magnitude of this growth—mainly because these models neglect to address two features that were...

Output per worker can be expressed as a function of technological efficiency and of the capital-output ratio. Because technology is exogenous in the Solow model, all of the endogenous convergence dynamics take place through the adjustment of the capital-output ratio. This paper uses the...

Since Friedman (1968), the traditional derivation of the accelerationist Phillips curve has related expected real wage inflation to the unemployment rate and then invoked markup pricing and adaptive expectations to generate the accelerationist price inflation equation. Blanchflower and Oswald...

With the introduction of monetary union, the US Federal Reserve system has become a common reference point against which to compare the procedures and policies of the fledgling ECB. This paper provides a brief overview of US monetary policy. The paper discusses the legal and institutional...