VARs are a popular tool for forecasting and structural analysis, but ill-suited to handle occasionally binding constraints, like the effective lower bound on nominal interest rates. We extend the VAR framework by modeling interest rates as censored observations of a latent shadow-rate process,...

Central banks and other forecasters have become increasingly interested in various aspects of density forecasts. However, recent sharp changes in macroeconomic volatility such as the Great Moderation and the more recent sharp rise in volatility associated with greater variation in energy prices...

Recent work suggests VAR models of output, inflation, and interest rates may be prone to instabilities. In the face of such instabilities, a variety of estimation or forecasting methods might be used to improve the accuracy of forecasts from a VAR. The uncertainty inherent in any single...

This paper presents analytical, Monte Carlo, and empirical evidence linking in-sample tests of predictive content and out-of-sample forecast accuracy. Our approach focuses on the negative effect that finite-sample estimation error has on forecast accuracy despite the presence of significant...

This paper develops bootstrap methods for testing whether, in a finite sample, competing out-of-sample forecasts from nested models are equally accurate. Most prior work on forecast tests for nested models has focused on a null hypothesis of equal accuracy in population - basically, whether...

This article presents analytical, Monte Carlo, and empirical evidence on combining recursive and rolling forecasts when linear predictive models are subject to structural change. Using a characterization of the bias-variance trade-off faced when choosing between either the recursive and rolling...

From 1975 to 1980, inflation in core (nonfood and nonenergy) consumer prices rose sharply as crude oil prices more than tripled. Yet, as crude oil prices quadrupled from late 2001 to 2007, core consumer price inflation remained essentially flat. Some observers have attributed the stability of...

Although many policymakers and analysts associate “core CPI inflation” with the CPI excluding food and energy, there are other measures of core consumer price inflation. Like the CPI excluding food and energy, these other measures typically attempt to identify the underlying trend in CPI...