We model the U.S. business cycle using a dynamic factor model that identifies common factors underlying fluctuations in state-level income and employment growth. We find three such common factors, each of which is associated with a set of factor loadings that indicate the extent to which each...

In this paper, we use recent developments in the testing of long-run neutrality propositions to measure the long-run response of real stock prices to a permanent inflation shock for 16 individual industrialized countries. The estimation results provide considerable support for long-run inflation...

The authors use a dynamic latent factor model to analyze comovements in OECD surpluses. The world factor underlying common fluctuations in budget surpluses across countries explains an average of 28 to 44 percent of the variation in individual country surpluses. The world factor, which can be...

Welch and Goyal (2008) find that numerous economic variables with in-sample predictive ability for the equity premium fail to deliver consistent out-of-sample forecasting gains relative to the historical average. Arguing that model uncertainty and instability seriously impair the forecasting...

We investigate the empirical relevance of structural breaks for GARCH models of exchange rate volatility using both in-sample and out-of-sample tests. We find significant evidence of structural breaks in the unconditional variance of seven of eight US dollar exchange rate return series over the...