This dissertation proposes a dynamic factor model with regime switching as an empirical characterization of business cycles. The approach integrates the idea of comovements among macroeconomic variables and asymmetries of business cycle expansions and contractions. The first is captured with an...

We develop a dynamic factor model with Markov switching to examine secular and business cycle fluctuations in the U.S. unemployment rates. We extract the common dynamics amongst unemployment rates disaggregated for 7 age groups. The framework allows analysis of the contribution of demographic...

This paper compares the forecasting performance of linear and nonlinear models under the presence of structural breaks for the Brazilian real GDP growth. The Markov switching models proposed by Hamilton (1989) and its generalized version by Lam (1990) are applied to quarterly GDP from 1975:1 to...

This paper provides early assessments of current U.S. Nominal GDP growth, which has been considered as a potential new monetary policy target. The nowcasts are computed using the exact amount of information that policy makers have available at the time predictions are made. However, real time...

We discuss and reconcile the geological and economic/technological views concerning the future of world oil production and prices, and present a nonlinear econometric model of the world oil market that encompasses both views. The model performs far better than existing empirical models in...

We provide an extensive analysis of the predictive ability of financial volatility for economic activity. We consider monthly measures of realized and implied volatility from the stock and bond markets. In a dynamic factor framework, we extract the common long-run component of volatility that is...

The book surveys modern literature on financial aggregation and index number theory, with special emphasis on the contributions of the book's two coauthors. In addition to an introduction and a systematic survey chapter unifying the rest of the book, this publication contains reprints of six...

This paper uses several methods to study the interrelationship among Divisia monetary aggregates, prices, and income, allowing for nonstationary, nonlinearities, asymmetries, and time-varying relationships among the series. We propose a multivariate regime switching unobserved components model...