This paper extends the Bayesian semiparametric stochastic volatility (SV-DPM) model of Jensen and Maheu (2010). Instead of using a Dirichlet process mixture (DPM) to model return innovations, we use an infinite hidden Markov model (IHMM). This allows for time variation in the return density...

This paper shows that oil shocks primarily impact economic growth through the conditional variance of growth. Our comparison of models focuses on density forecasts. Over a range of dynamic models, oil shock measures and data we fi nd a robust link between oil shocks and the volatility of...