We approach the social choice problem as one of optimal statistical inference. If individual voters or judges observe the true order ona set of alternatives with error, then it is possible to use the set of individual rankings to make probability statements about the correct social order. Given...

The paper develops a Small Open Economy New Keynesian DSGE-VAR (SOENKDSGE-VAR) model of the South African economy, characterised by incomplete pass-through of exchange rate changes, external habit formation, partial indexation of domestic prices and wages to past inflation, and staggered price...

Emerging market economies (also known as emerging economies, EEs) have become important on the world economic stage, where they now play a vital role in international trade and financial flows and account for a conspicuous fraction of the global economic dynamic. Despite the relatively tepid...

Using both standard regressions and Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo estimation methods from a Bayesian perspective and a sample of 39 countries for 1981-2006, we re-examine the role of central-bank independence (CBI) in macroeconomic outcomes. Control variables commonly used in the literature are...

This paper builds a New Keynesian model with financial frictions and monetary and fiscal rules for the United States. We incorporate a rational bubble process in the (relative) price of capital. Our results show that bubbles account for a significant amount of variance in key macroeconomic...

This paper develops and applies tools to assess multivariate aspects of Bayesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model forecasts and their ability to predict comovements among key macroeconomic variables. We construct posterior predictive checks to evaluate conditional and...

This paper examines the monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area for the period of single monetary policy using factor-augmented vector autoregressive (FAVAR) techniques. The contributions of the paper are fourfold. First, a novel dataset consisting of 120 disaggregated macroeconomic...

Using the Bayesian approach, a small open economy DSGE model was estimated using a sample of quarterly data for three Central and Eastern Europe economies, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The hypothesis that central banks react to exchange rate movements was tested using posterior odds...

We propose a new approach to forecasting the term structure of interest rates, which allows to efficiently extract the information contained in a large panel of yields. In particular, we use a large Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) with an optimal amount of shrinkage towards univariate AR...

We investigate macroeconomic fluctuations in the Mediterranean, their similarities and convergence. A model with four indicators, roughly covering the West, the East and the Middle East and the North Africa portions of the Mediterranean, characterizes well the historical experience since the...