FRB/US, a large-scale, nonlinear macroeconomic model of the U.S., has been in use at the Federal Reserve Board for 25 years. For nearly as long, the FRB/US “project” has included a linear version of the model known as LINVER. A key reason that LINVER exists is the vast reduction in the...

Shimer (2005) argues that the Mortensen-Pissarides (MP) model of unemployment lacks an amplification mechanism because it generates less than 10 percent of the observed business cycle fluctuations in unemployment given labor productivity shocks of plausible magnitude. This paper argues that part...

This paper illustrates the usefulness of sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods in approximating DSGE model posterior distributions. We show how the tempering schedule can be chosen adaptively, document the accuracy and runtime benefits o fgeneralized data tempering for “online” estimation...

We propose a model for analyzing euro area trade based on the interaction between macroeconomic and trade variables. First, we show that macroeconomic variables are necessary to generate accurate short-term trade forecasts; this result can be explained by the high correlation between trade and...

This paper considers a non-stationary dynamic factor model for large datasets to disentangle long-run from short-run co-movements. We first propose a new Quasi Maximum Likelihood estimator of the model based on the Kalman Smoother and the Expectation Maximisation algorithm. The asymptotic...

This paper proposes a dynamic multi-factor copula for use in high dimensional time series applications. A novel feature of our model is that the assignment of individual variables to groups is estimated from the data, rather than being pre-assigned using SIC industry codes, market capitalization...

Aggregate under-reporting of household spending in the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) can result from two fundamental types of measurement errors: higher-income households (who presumably spend more than average) are under-represented in the CE estimation sample, or there is systematic...

Credit to consumers and business is critical to the efficient functioning of the U.S. economy, and finance companies are a key source of such credit. Every five years, the Federal Reserve conducts a two-part survey: the Census of Finance Companies (CFC) to identify the universe of such firms and...

Survey responses to quantitative financial questions frequently display strong patterns of heaping at round numbers. This paper uses two studies to examine variation in rounding across questions and by individual characteristics. Rounding was more common for respondents low in ability, for...