We estimate the fiscal (spending) multiplier using quarterly U.S. data, 1986-2017. We define government spending shocks as actual minus expected expenditure growth, the latter obtained from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. We employ the ST-VAR model with the local projections method. A...

A financial conditions index (FCI) is designed to summarise the state of financial markets. Two are constructed with UK data. The first is the first principal component of a set of financial indicators. The second comes from a new approach taking information from a large set of macroeconomic...

This paper provides an approach to estimation and inference for non-linear conditional mean panel data models, in the presence of cross-sectional dependence. We modify the common correlated effects (CCE) correction of Pesaran (2006) to filter out the interactive unobserved multifactor structure....

We consider time series forecasting in the presence of ongoing structural change where both the time series dependence and the nature of the structural change are unknown. Methods that downweight older data, such as rolling regressions, forecast averaging over different windows and exponentially...

We examine how to forecast after a recent break, introducing a new approach, monitoring for change and then combining forecasts from a model using the full sample and another using post‐break data. We compare this to some robust techniques: rolling regressions, forecast averaging over all...

We consider an alternative use of simulation in the context of using the Likelihood-Ratio statistic to test non-nested models. To date simulation has been used to estimate the Kullback-Leibler measure of closeness between two densities, which in turn 'mean adjusts' the Likelihood-Ratio...

The estimation of dynamic factor models for large sets of variables has attracted considerable attention recently, due to the increased availability of large datasets. In this paper we propose a new methodology for estimating factors from large datasets based on state space models, discuss its...

Public finance sustainability plays a central role in the stabilization efforts in Latin America. The emphasis on fiscal policy in these countries goes back to the debt crisis of the 1980s, which was associated with large fiscal imbalances. We analyze the sustainability of government debt for a...

Using a new methodology that allows for nonlinearities, we find frequent support for sustainability in the debt of a set of Latin American countries. Our findings overturn results obtained with traditional unit-root tests and provide a more realistic alternative to evaluate the external solvency...