This paper documents business cycle similarities and differences among the 12 Federal Reserve districts in the USA and the 15 countries that make up the EU. The comparison is suggestive of what might be expected to emerge in the way of business cycle synchronization from a monetary union between...

Existing analyses of the effects of fiscal policy in general equilibrium models have typically been conducted under the assumption that the long-run supply of capital is perfectly elastic at a fixed rate of time preference. These analyses have shown that the long-run response of the capital...

We analyse fifteen post-World War II US macroeconomic time series using a modified outlier identification procedure based on Tsay (1988a). "Large shocks" appear to be present in all the series we examined. Furthermore, there are three basic outlier patterns: (1) outliers seem to be associated...

In this paper, the authors consider a model in which there is discontinuous adjustment to a long-run equilibrium. Here, the equilibrium error follows a threshold autoregression that is mean-reverting outside a given range and has a unit root inside the range. The authors suggest a two-step...

This paper develops new methodology for the estimation of prewar gross national product (GNP), taps previously unused data sources, an d develops new estimates for the periods 1869-1908 and 1869-1928. Primary among the new data sources are direct measures of output in the transportation,...

This paper analyzes the impact of macroeconomic activity on the level of poverty in the U.S. economy. The authors us e a macroeconometric model of poverty in the United States where the rat e of poverty is presumed to depend upon changes in various indicators of macroeconomic performance and...

This article demonstrates the difficulty that traditional outlier detection methods, such as that of R. S. Tsay, have in identifying level shifts in time series. Initializing the outlier/level-shift search with an estimated autoregressive moving average model lowers the power of the level-shift...