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Journal Article
The cyclical volatility of interest rates
Interest rates change in response to a variety of economic events, such as changes in Fed policy, crises in financial markets, and changes in prospects for long-term economic growth and inflation. But such events are sporadic, and interest rates show a more regular pattern of volatility that corresponds to the business cycle. In this article, Keith Sill examines some facts and theory about the cyclical volatility of short-term and long-term interest rates.
Working Paper
Measuring disagreement in probabilistic and density forecasts
In this paper, we introduce and study a class of disagreement measures for probability distribution forecasts based on the Wasserstein metric. We describe a few advantageous properties of this measure of disagreement between forecasters. After describing alternatives to our proposal, we use examples to compare these measures to one another in closed form. We provide two empirical illustrations. The first application uses our measure to gauge disagreement among professional forecasters about output growth and inflation rate in the Eurozone. The second application employs our measure to gauge ...
Working Paper
Exchange rates, monetary policy regimes, and beliefs
The authors investigate an international monetary business-cycle model in which agents face monetary policy processes that incorporate regime shifts. In any given period agents cannot directly observe the policy regime, but instead form beliefs that are updated via Bayesian learning. As a result, expectation adjustment displays inertia that adds persistence to the effects of monetary shocks. Monetary policy process for the U.S. and an aggregate of OECD countries are estimated using Hamilton's Markov-switching model. The authors then solve and calibrate a version of the model and examine its ...
Journal Article
Restructuring during recessions: a silver lining in the cloud?
Recessions usually mean bad times for many workers and firms: companies close; jobs are lost. However, recessions can present certain opportunities for organizations. For example, restructuring can be less costly during a recession: workers can be retrained and machines upgraded. In turn, these actions position a company to take advantage of the next economic upturn. In this article, Keith Sill discusses the "creative destruction" that takes place during recessions and outlines some of the policy implications of restructuring
Working Paper
Macroeconomic volatility and the equity premium
Recent empirical work documents a decline in the U.S. equity premium and a decline in the standard deviation of real output growth. We investigate the link between aggregate risk and the asset returns in a dynamic production based asset-pricing model. When calibrated to match asset return moments, the model implies that the post-1984 reduction in TFP shock volatility of 60 percent gives rise to a 40 percent decline in the equity premium. Lower macroeconomic risk post-1984 can account for a substantial fraction of the decline in the equity premium.
Working Paper
Exchange rates and monetary policy regimes in Canada and the U.S.
This paper examines monetary regime switching in Canada and the United States and the implications of regime switching for exchange rates and key nominal and real macroeconomic aggregates for the two countries. Evidence of Markov regime switching in the process governing monetary base growth and in the bilateral exchange rate between the two countries is presented. Given this evidence, a two-country general equilibrium monetary model is constructed to account for observed properties of the U.S.-Canadian dollar exchange rate and for measured effects of monetary policy on key variables. Agents ...
Working Paper
DSGE model-based forecasting of non-modelled variables
This paper develops and illustrates a simple method to generate a DSGE model-based forecast for variables that do not explicitly appear in the model (non-core variables). The authors use auxiliary regressions that resemble measurement equations in a dynamic factor model to link the non-core variables to the state variables of the DSGE model. Predictions for the non-core variables are obtained by applying their measurement equations to DSGE model- generated forecasts of the state variables. Using a medium-scale New Keynesian DSGE model, the authors apply their approach to generate and evaluate ...
Working Paper
Sectoral shocks and metropolitan employment growth
Horvath and Verbrugge (1996) argue that when investigating the sources of aggregate fluctuations, it is important to use the highest frequency data available. Using monthly data for the U.S. economy they show that industry-specific shocks are more important in explaining fluctuations in industrial production than are common aggregate shocks. With the exception of Coulson (1999) studies that examine the issue at the subnational level have used low frequency, spatially aggregated data. The authors examine the relative importance of national disturbances versus local industry shocks for ...