We use data generated by a macroeconomic DSGE model to study the relative benefits of forecast combinations based on forecast-encompassing tests relative to simple uniformly weighted forecast averages across rival models. Assumed rival models are four linear autoregressive specifications, one of...

The substantial questions of macroeconomics itself are very old, going back to the origins of economics itself. But professional self-consciousness of the distinction between macroeconomics and microeconomics dates only to the 1930s. The distinction was drawn quite independently of Keynes, yet...

This paper surveys efforts to automate the dating of business cycle turning points. Doing this on a real time, out-of-sample basis is a bigger challenge than many academics might presume due to factors such as data revisions and changes in economic relationships over time. The paper stresses the...

We extend the sudden stops literature by allowing crisis episodes to be caused by either the retreat of global investors, as is assumed but not shown in the extant literature, or the sudden flight of local investors. We find that almost half of the previously defined sudden stops are actually...

This paper tests whether trade in new goods is partially responsible for the pro-trade effects of the euro and provides a measure of the size of the effect. It works with a very large data set (about 16 million observations) covering twenty countries at the most disaggregated level of trade data...

This paper presents new tests of the permanent income hypothesis and other widely used models of household behavior using data from the labor market. We estimate the quot;excess sensitivityquot; of job search behavior to cash-on-hand using sharp discontinuities in eligibility for severance pay...