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EBookClubs

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Book Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Spring 2010

Download or read book Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Spring 2010 written by David H. Romer and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-09 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) provides academic and business economists, government officials, and members of the financial and business communities with timely research on current economic issues. Contents: Editors' Summary The Labor Market in the Great Recession By Michael W. L. Elsby (University of Michigan), Bart Hobijn (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco), and Aysegül Sahin (Federal Reserve Bank of New York) The Income- and Expenditure- Side Estimates of U.S. Output Growth By Jeremy J. Nalewaik (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) The Rug Rat Race By Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey (University of California, San Diego) The Crisis By Alan Greenspan (Greenspan Associates LLC) The Initial Impact of the Crisis on Emerging Market Countries By Olivier J. Blanchard (International Monetary Fund and MIT), Mitali Das (International Monetary Fund), and Hamid Faruqee (International Monetary Fund) Geographic Variation in Health Care: The Role of Private Markets By Tomas J. Philipson (University of Chicago), Seth A. Seabury (RAND Corporation), Lee M. Lockwood (University of Chicago), Dana P. Goldman (University of Southern California), and Darius Lakdawalla (Univeresity of Southern California)

Book Optimal Forecasts from Markov Switching Models

Download or read book Optimal Forecasts from Markov Switching Models written by Tom Boot and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Averaging Forecasts from VARs with Uncertain Instabilities

Download or read book Averaging Forecasts from VARs with Uncertain Instabilities written by Todd E. Clark and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A body of recent work suggests commonly-used VAR models of output, inflation, and interest rates may be prone to instabilities. In the face of such instabilities, a variety of estimation or forecasting methods might be used to improve the accuracy of forecasts from a VAR. These methods include using different approaches to lag selection, different observation windows for estimation, (over-) differencing, intercept correction, stochastically time-varying parameters, break dating, discounted least squares, Bayesian shrinkage, and detrending of inflation and interest rates. Although each individual method could be useful, the uncertainty inherent in any single representation of instability could mean that combining forecasts from the entire range of VAR estimates will further improve forecast accuracy. Focusing on models of U.S. output, prices, and interest rates, this paper examines the effectiveness of combination in improving VAR forecasts made with real-time data. The combinations include simple averages, medians, trimmed means, and a number of weighted combinations, based on: Bates-Granger regressions, factor model estimates, regressions involving just forecast quartiles, Bayesian model averaging, and predictive least squares-based weighting. Our goal is to identify those approaches that, in real time, yield the most accurate forecasts of these variables. We use forecasts from simple univariate time series models and the Survey of Professional Forecasters as benchmarks.

Book Forecasting with Small Macroeconomic VARs in the Presence of Instabilities

Download or read book Forecasting with Small Macroeconomic VARs in the Presence of Instabilities written by Todd E. Clark and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small-scale VARs have come to be widely used in macroeconomics, for purposes ranging from forecasting output, prices, and interest rates to modeling expectations formation in theoretical models. However, a body of recent work suggests such VAR models may be prone to instabilities. In the face of such instabilities, a variety of estimation or forecasting methods might be used to improve the accuracy of forecasts from a VAR. These methods include using different approaches to lag selection, observation windows for estimation, (over-) differencing, intercept correction, stochastically time--varying parameters, break dating, discounted least squares, Bayesian shrinkage, detrending of inflation and interest rates, and model averaging. Focusing on simple models of U.S. output, prices, and interest rates, this paper compares the effectiveness of such methods. Our goal is to identify those approaches that, in real time, yield the most accurate forecasts of these variables. We use forecasts from simple univariate time series models, the Survey of Professional Forecasters and the Federal Reserve Board's Greenbook as benchmarks

Book News Noise and Estimates of the true Unobserved State of the Economy

Download or read book News Noise and Estimates of the true Unobserved State of the Economy written by Dennis J. Fixler and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Explicit duration Markov Switching Models

Download or read book Explicit duration Markov Switching Models written by Silvia Chiappa and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Markov switching models (MSMs) are probabilistic models that employ multiple sets of parameters to describe different dynamic regimes that a time series may exhibit at different periods of time. The switching mechanism between regimes is controlled by unobserved random variables that form a first-order Markov chain. Explicit-duration MSMs contain additional variables that explicitly model the distribution of time spent in each regime. This allows to define duration distributions of any form, but also to impose complex dependence between the observations and to reset the dynamics to initial conditions. Models that focus on the first two properties are most commonly known as hidden semi-Markov models or segment models, whilst models that focus on the third property are most commonly known as changepoint models or reset models. In this monograph, we provide a description of explicit-duration modelling by categorizing the different approaches into three groups, which differ in encoding in the explicit-duration variables different information about regime change/reset boundaries. The approaches are described using the formalism of graphical models, which allows to graphically represent and assess statistical dependence and therefore to easily describe the structure of complex models and derive inference routines. The presentation is intended to be pedagogical, focusing on providing a characterization of the three groups in terms of model structure constraints and inference properties. The monograph is supplemented with a software package that contains most of the models and examples described. The material presented should be useful to both researchers wishing to learn about these models and researchers wishing to develop them further.

Book Estimating Probabilities of Recession in Real Time Using GDP and GDI

Download or read book Estimating Probabilities of Recession in Real Time Using GDP and GDI written by Jeremy Nalewaik and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Complex Systems in Finance and Econometrics

Download or read book Complex Systems in Finance and Econometrics written by Robert A. Meyers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-11-03 with total page 919 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finance, Econometrics and System Dynamics presents an overview of the concepts and tools for analyzing complex systems in a wide range of fields. The text integrates complexity with deterministic equations and concepts from real world examples, and appeals to a broad audience.

Book A Guide to Econometrics

Download or read book A Guide to Econometrics written by Peter Kennedy and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-02-19 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dieses etwas andere Lehrbuch bietet keine vorgefertigten Rezepte und Problemlösungen, sondern eine kritische Diskussion ökonometrischer Modelle und Methoden: voller überraschender Fragen, skeptisch, humorvoll und anwendungsorientiert. Sein Erfolg gibt ihm Recht.

Book Three Essays on the Application of the Markov Switching Multifractal Model

Download or read book Three Essays on the Application of the Markov Switching Multifractal Model written by Waleem Babatunde Alausa and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The overall purpose of this thesis is to extend and apply the Markov Switching Multifractal (MSM) model to various economic problems. To this extent, Chapter 1 lays the ground work for the next chapters by reviewing the MSM model, discussing its properties and outlining its estimation procedures. The chapter also reviews the distributional properties of several commodity markets that make them amenable to the MSM model. Chapter 2 extends the MSM model by incorporating a vector error correction component, which includes in the conditional mean equation, the cointegrating relationship between spot and futures prices. The VECM-MSM model has two distinctive features that incorporate the empirical properties of asset prices. First, it includes an error correction mechanism in the mean equation that incorporates the long-run relationship between spot and futures prices. Second, the model specifies the conditional second moments as a bivariate Markov Switching Multifractal (MSM) model. The VECM-MSM model is applied to study the problem of risk hedging in the futures market. The hedging effectiveness of the proposed VECM-MSM model is evaluated, using a value-at-risk (VaR) approach. Specifically, we compare the hedging effectiveness of the proposed model to those of alternative models by assessing their unconditional and conditional VaR coverages. Models are then ranked in terms of the adequacy and accuracy of their hedged portfolio VaR. The in-sample and out-of-sample hedge effectiveness shows that the VECM-MSM hedged portfolio outperforms alternative hedging strategies in terms of having the lowest rate of VaR violations among the different strategies. Statistical tests of unconditional and conditional coverages also show that the VECM-MSM model better predicts an investor's downside risk in that the VaR predictions are more accurate than the predictions from the alternative models. Chapter 3 of this thesis investigates the excess commodity comovement phenomenon, using the MSM model. One of the stylized facts of commodity prices is their tendency for comovement. The phenomenon implies that seemingly unrelated commodities tend to move together beyond what can be attributed to fundamentals, such as demand and supply conditions, exchange rates, interest rates, industrial production etc. Excess commodity comovement bears significant welfare and risk management implications. For an instance, a synchronous rise in prices of commodities exerts significant inflationary pressure on commodity import dependent countries, and limits their ability to maintain economic stability and resist inflationary pressures. Moreover, to the extent that comovement measures, such as correlation and covariance among commodities, comprise an essential ingredient in risk assessment, pricing, portfolio management and hedging, failure to account for such excess comovement can lead to sub-optimal economic decisions. Therefore within the debate on excess commodity comovement, the objective of this chapter is twofold. First, it analyzes the degree of excess commodity comovement across a variety of commodities. Second, it analyzes the frequency-dependent nature of comovement across related (e.g. crude and heating oil) and unrelated commodities (e.g. copper and corn). First, we find that there is significant comovement between commodity prices, beyond what can simply be explained by macroeconomic fundamentals. Second, decomposing comovements into multiple frequencies, we find that all commodities exhibit long-run excess comovements which are driven by low frequency fundamentals such as weather, demographic and macroeconomic factors. But some commodities also exhibit significant short-run excess comovements that may be attributable to short-run factors such as liquidity constraints, indexation, etc. Third, the dynamic correlations show that excess comovements are higher in periods of high volatility and vice-versa. The final chapter applies a new class of model, the Autoregressive Markov switching multifractal model, for forecasting spot electricity prices. Three variants of the model are examinedEmploying hourly prices from the AESO market, the parameters of the ARX-MSM models are estimated, and one-step-ahead hourly forecasts are obtained. To put the performance of the ARX-MSM models into perspective, the results are compared to those of other notable models used in the literature, namely the AR(1), ARX, ARX-GARCH, mean-reverting jump and the 2-state independent Markov regime switching models. Goodness-of-fit tests indicate that the ARX-MSM models fit the data significantly better than the competing models. Likewise, out-of-sample results show that the ARX-MSM models provide better forecast accuracy.

Book Markov Switching Vector Autoregressions

Download or read book Markov Switching Vector Autoregressions written by Hans-Martin Krolzig and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contributes to re cent developments on the statistical analysis of multiple time series in the presence of regime shifts. Markov-switching models have become popular for modelling non-linearities and regime shifts, mainly, in univariate eco nomic time series. This study is intended to provide a systematic and operational ap proach to the econometric modelling of dynamic systems subject to shifts in regime, based on the Markov-switching vector autoregressive model. The study presents a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical properties of Markov-switching vector autoregressive processes and the related statistical methods. The statistical concepts are illustrated with applications to empirical business cyde research. This monograph is a revised version of my dissertation which has been accepted by the Economics Department of the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 1996. It con sists mainly of unpublished material which has been presented during the last years at conferences and in seminars. The major parts of this study were written while I was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschajt (DFG), Berliner Graduier tenkolleg Angewandte Mikroökonomik and Sondeiforschungsbereich 373 at the Free University and Humboldt-University of Berlin. Work was finally completed in the project The Econometrics of Macroeconomic Forecasting founded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) at the Institute of Economies and Statistics, University of Oxford. It is a pleasure to record my thanks to these institutions for their support of my research embodied in this study.

Book Economic Forecasting

Download or read book Economic Forecasting written by Graham Elliott and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and integrated approach to economic forecasting problems Economic forecasting involves choosing simple yet robust models to best approximate highly complex and evolving data-generating processes. This poses unique challenges for researchers in a host of practical forecasting situations, from forecasting budget deficits and assessing financial risk to predicting inflation and stock market returns. Economic Forecasting presents a comprehensive, unified approach to assessing the costs and benefits of different methods currently available to forecasters. This text approaches forecasting problems from the perspective of decision theory and estimation, and demonstrates the profound implications of this approach for how we understand variable selection, estimation, and combination methods for forecasting models, and how we evaluate the resulting forecasts. Both Bayesian and non-Bayesian methods are covered in depth, as are a range of cutting-edge techniques for producing point, interval, and density forecasts. The book features detailed presentations and empirical examples of a range of forecasting methods and shows how to generate forecasts in the presence of large-dimensional sets of predictor variables. The authors pay special attention to how estimation error, model uncertainty, and model instability affect forecasting performance. Presents a comprehensive and integrated approach to assessing the strengths and weaknesses of different forecasting methods Approaches forecasting from a decision theoretic and estimation perspective Covers Bayesian modeling, including methods for generating density forecasts Discusses model selection methods as well as forecast combinations Covers a large range of nonlinear prediction models, including regime switching models, threshold autoregressions, and models with time-varying volatility Features numerous empirical examples Examines the latest advances in forecast evaluation Essential for practitioners and students alike

Book Hyperbolic Discounting and Uniform Savings Floors

Download or read book Hyperbolic Discounting and Uniform Savings Floors written by Benjamin A. Malin and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: