I first show that taking moving averages of the term spread, the dividend yield, and the Shiller’s CAPE, significantly increases their ability to predict one month and 12-month forward equity market excess returns, and the state of the business cycle. Dividend yield, CAPE and term spread are...

This paper investigates whether the use of broader Divisia monetary aggregates improves money’s performance in forecasting economic activity within a time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) framework. We evaluate entire predictive densities from several alternative models of US...

This paper develops a novel method to correct small-sample bias in autoregressive roots of AR(p) models. We evaluate median-bias properties and variability of the bias-adjusted parameters by examining the accuracy of bias-adjusted impulse responses. Our simulation results show that bias...

Luigi Barone’s famous curve offers an excellent framework for the study of the microeconomic and macroeconomic implications of innovation and imitation. However, neither Barone nor his epigones have been able to sufficiently “exploit” his contribution to date. Complementing his analysis of...

This study uses two large datasets to explore the output dynamics following economic disasters, one including 180 economic disasters across 38 countries over the last two centuries, and the other including 204 economic disasters in 182 countries since World War II. Our results suggest that...

This paper estimates the benefits and costs of state suppression policies to “bend the curve” during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. We employ a value-of-production approach that values benefits and costs in terms of additions or subtractions to total production....

The traditional approaches to “cure” economic recessions are monetary and fiscal policies. Most economic crises are first addressed with monetary instruments, as the Federal Reserve’s extensive corporate bond purchasing program of March 24, 2020, has shown. However, when interest rates are...

This paper estimates the benefits and costs of state suppression policies to “bend the curve” during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. Relative to a baseline in which only the infected and at-risk populations mitigate the spread of coronavirus, we estimate that total...

The Hodrick-Prescott filter is a convenient and therefore widely and routinely applied detrending method in macroeconomics working with empirical data. However, James Hamilton has recently gained attention with his vigorous advice against it and a proposal of a better alternative. Before...

This paper studies the term premium in a general equilibrium model with a financial constraint and central bank asset purchases. Structural estimates of the term premium match past empirical measures. Term premium dynamics are policy dependent, with Federal Reserve quantitative easing programs...