Analyzing the performance of the economy in real time is a challenge for those who must forecast macroeconomic variables such as inflation or employment. A key aspect of this challenge is evaluating the incoming flow of information contained in economic announcements. In this article, the...

This paper uses a sequence of government budget constraints to motivate estimates of returns on the U.S. Federal government debt. Our estimates differ conceptually and quantitatively from the interest payments reported by the U.S. government. We use our estimates to account for contributions to...

Uncertainties affect both the stock and bond markets. Thus, we evaluate whether world uncertainty indices perform better than stock and bond market indicators in forecasting U.S. GDP growth. We find that while U.S. World Uncertainty Index (frequency) forecasts U.S. GDP growth well, U.S. stock...

Using Bayesian tests for a structural break at an unknown break date, we search for a volatility reduction within the post-war sample for the growth rates of U.S. aggregate and disaggregate real GDP. We find that the growth rate of aggregate real GDP has been less volatile since the early...

This paper examines U.S. per capita income convergence in 1929-2002 using a panel approach based on the assumptions of multiple aggregate structural breaks and growth clubs. One novelty is that our specification explicitly allows for regional conditional convergence to the nation, while at the...

Our research focuses on forecasting the GDP growth rate by taking a considerable number of economic indicators from various frequencies into account within a new penalty-based mixed-frequency data model called the MIDAS-LASSO model. The empirical findings reveal that the MIDAS-LASSO model has a...