In contrast to conventional model selection criteria, the Focused Information Criterion (FIC) allows for the purpose-specific choice of model specifications. This accommodates the idea that one kind of model might be highly appropriate for inferences on a particular focus parameter, but not for...

It is widely known that when there are negative moving average errors, a high order augmented autoregression is necessary for unit root tests to have good size, but that information criteria such as the AIC and BIC tend to select a truncation lag that is very small. Furthermore, size distortions...

We consider issues related to the order of an autoregression selected using information criteria. We study the sensitivity of the estimated order to i) whether the effective number of observations is held fixed when estimating models of different order, ii) whether the estimate of the variance...

This paper disentangles fluctuations in disaggregated prices due to macroeconomic and sectoral conditions using a factor-augmented vector autoregression estimated on a large data set. On the basis of this estimation, we establish eight facts: (1) Macroeconomic shocks explain only about 15% of...

This paper characterizes the transmission mechanism of monetary shocks across countries of the euro area, documents how this mechanism has changed with the introduction of the euro, and explores some potential explanations. The factor-augmented VAR (FAVAR) framework used is sufficiently rich to...

In this article we use a multivariate framework to estimate net profits and levels of capital and labor for informal Mexican microfirms had they been formal. We estimate a Roy model to simultaneously model three different microfirm responses conditional on the sector (formal or informal) choice....

The scientific environment might influence university researchers’ job designs. In a principal–agent model, researchers must choose between substitutable tasks, publishing or teaching, according to their individual abilities and the scientific and pedagogical context that exists in their...

Any serious empirical study of factor substitutability has to allow the data to display complementarity as well as substitutability. The standard approach reflecting this idea is a translog specification - this is also the approach used by numerous studies analyzing the relative capital-skill...

Traditional panel stochastic frontier studies on privatization of Chinese State-owned firms face a major challenge, namely, the endogeneity problem. The endogeneity problem is present because decision-making process of privatization in China is very likely influenced by some unobserved...

This paper disentangles fluctuations in disaggregated prices due to macroeconomic and sectoral conditions using a factor-augmented vector autoregression estimated on a large data set. On the basis of this estimation, we establish eight facts: (1) Macroeconomic shocks explain only about 15% of...