As both the natural level of output and the New Keynesian output gap cannot be observed in practice, there is quite some debate on the question how these variables look like in practice. Rather than taking the standard approach of using a time trend or the HP-filter to obtain estimates of these...

This paper uses a Bayesian non-stationary dynamic factor model to extract common trends and cycles from large datasets. An important but neglected feature of Bayesian statistics allows to treat stationary and non-stationary time series equally in terms of parameter estimation. Based on this...

We argue that in an economy with downward nominal wage rigidity, the output gap is negative on average. Because it is more difficult to cut wages than to increase them, firms reduce employment more during downturns than they increase employment during expansions. This is demonstrated in a simple...

Using European Commission real-time data, we show that potential output (PO) estimates were substantially and persistently revised downwards after the Great Recession. We decompose PO revisions into revisions of the capital stock, trend labor, and trend total-factor productivity (TFP)....