This paper proposes a moment-matching method for approximating vector autoregressions by finite-state Markov chains. The Markov chain is constructed by targeting the conditional moments of the underlying continuous process. The proposed method is more robust to the number of discrete values and...

We examine how medium-term movements in real exchange rates and GDP vary with international financial conditions. For this purpose, we study the international transmission of productivity shocks across a variety of IRBC models that incorporate different assumptions about the persistence of...

The ability of public sector policy makers to prioritize has a huge impact on the effectiveness of public service provision. Public services can take the form of final outputs demanded by consumers or of intermediate outputs contributing to a process of realizing the higher goals of society. In...

Labour income follows a deterministic growth trend and fluctuates between two values. Interest rates are drawn initially, fluctuate between two values and can differ in their arrival rates. Low interest rates imply a stationary long-run wealth distribution, high interest rates imply exploding...

We build a simple dynamic structural model of the firm, with state variable being earnings. It can address general empirical levels of investment, dividends, equity issuance in distress, leverage, debt duration, and liquidation/bankruptcy. Firms with very low leverage carry a substantial...

Rebalancing alpha is the excess return of a fixed-weight portfolio, which is regularly rebalanced, over its buy-and-hold counterpart. Two kinds of effects, both results of portfolio rebalancing, contribute to rebalancing alpha. The first is a volatility effect that arises from randomness of...