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Working Paper
The less volatile U.S. economy: a Bayesian investigation of timing, breadth, and potential explanations
Using a Bayesian model comparison strategy, we search for a volatility reduction within the post-war sample for the growth rates of U.S. aggregate and disaggregate real GDP. We find that the growth rate of aggregate real GDP has been less volatile since the early 1980s, and that this volatility reduction is concentrated in the cyclical component of real GDP. The growth rates of many of the broad production sectors of real GDP display similar reductions in volatility, suggesting the aggregate volatility reduction does not have a narrow source. We also find a large volatility reduction in ...
Working Paper
Markov regime switching and unit root tests
We investigate the power and size performance of unit root tests when the data undergo Markov regime switching. All tests, including those robust to a single break in trend growth rate, have low power against a process with a Markov-switching trend. Under the null hypothesis, we find previously documented size distortions in Dickey-Fuller type tests caused by a single break in trend growth rate or variance do not generalize to most parameterizations of Markov switching in trend or variance. However, Markov switching in variance can lead to overrejection in tests allowing for a single break in ...
Conference Paper
Recursive structure in U.S. income, prices and output
Working Paper
Business cycle detrending of macroeconomic data via a latent business cycle index
We use Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to augment a vector autoregressive system with a latent business cycle index that is negative during recessions and positive during expansions. We then sample counterfactual values of the macroeconomic variables in the case where the latent business cycle index is held constant at its median value. These counterfactual values represent posterior beliefs about how the economy would have evolved absent business cycle fluctuations. One advantage is that a VAR framework provides model-consistent counterfactual values in the same way that VARs provide ...
Working Paper
Markov regime-switching and unit root tests
We investigate the power and size performance of unit root tests when the true data generating process undergoes Markov regime-switching. All tests, including those robust to a single break in trend growth rate, have very low power against a process with a Markov-switching trend growth rate as in Lam (1990). However, for the case of business cycle non-linearities, unit root tests are very powerful against models used as alternatives to Lam (1990) that specify regime-switching in the transitory component of output. Under the null hypothesis, the received literature documents size distortions ...
Working Paper
The less volatile U.S. economy: a Bayesian investigation of timing, breadth, and potential explanations
Using Bayesian tests for a structural break at an unknown break date, we search for a volatility reduction within the post-war sample for the growth rates of U.S. aggregate and disaggregate real GDP. We find that the growth rate of aggregate real GDP has been less volatile since the early 1980's, and that this volatility reduction is concentrated in the cyclical component of real GDP. The growth rates of many of the broad production sectors of real GDP display similar reductions in volatility, suggesting the aggregate volatility reduction does not have a narrow source. We also find a large ...