Vector autoregressions with Markov-switching parameters (MS-VARs) offer dramatically better data fit than their constant-parameter predecessors. However, computational complications, as well as negative results about the importance of switching in parameters other than shock variances, have...

The Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC) method can enhance Bayesian DSGE estimation by sampling from a posterior distribution spanning potentially nonnested models with parameter spaces of different dimensionality. We use the method to jointly sample from an ARMA process of unknown...

This paper investigates whether transforming the Consumer Price Index with a class of power transformations lead to an improvement of inflation forecasting accuracy. We use one of the prototypical models to forecast short run inflation which is known as the univariate time series ARIMA . This...

This paper examines the implications of changing the expectations assumption that is embedded in nearly all current macroeconomic models. The paper substitutes measured or real expectations for rational expectations in an array of standard macroeconomic relationships, as well as in a DSGE model....

Investment booms and asset "bubbles" are often the consequence of heavily leveraged borrowing and speculations of persistent growth in asset demand. We show theoretically that dynamic interactions between elastic credit supply (due to leveraged borrowing) and persistent credit demand (due to...

In this paper, the impact of interest-rate smoothing under Taylor-type rules in the context of a two-sector small open economy is considered. The normative question of whether interest-rate smoothing as a policy response is beneficial for household welfare over the business cycle of the small...

Many asset pricing puzzles can be explained when habit formation is added to standard preferences. We show that utility functions with a habit then gives rise to a puzzle of consumption volatility in place of the asset pricing puzzles when agents can choose consumption and labor optimally in...

The paper studies the effects of fiscal policy in an integrated world economy. The setup is one with habit-forming endogenous rates of time preference and adjustment costs in investment. Most of the predictions of the model are in line with the recent empirical literature on fiscal policy. For...

For post-1975 Canadian data, we document the joint behavior of output, the current account, and the interest differential at the business cycle frequency. We also interpret the joint behavior using a simple small open economy model. Our simple model assumes that agents have access to world...