This paper discusses Bayesian inference in change-point models. Existing approaches involve placing a (possibly hierarchical) prior over a known number of change-points. We show how two popular priors have some potentially undesirable properties (e.g. allocating excessive prior weight to...

This paper discusses the consumption-wealth relationship. Following the recent influential work of Lettau and Ludvigson [e.g. Lettau and Ludvigson (2001), (2004)], we use data on consumption, assets and labor income and a vector error correction framework. Key findings of their work are that...

This paper develops a new approach to change-point modeling that allows the number of change-points in the observed sample to be unknown. The model we develop assumes regime durations have a Poisson distribution. It approximately nests the two most common approaches: the time varying parameter...